


all sinners crawl

by evocates



Series: a revolution for the sake of one man [1]
Category: Les Misérables (Dallas 2014), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Dom/sub Undertones, Eventual Fix-It, Explicit Consent, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Javert's Confused Boner, Law Procedures, M/M, Middle Aged Virgins, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Non-Sexual Slavery, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Religious Content, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, That's pretty disturbing because Javert's head is a mess, Trauma, Wet Dream, Worldbuilding, but not for a while, informal D/s, plot without porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-04-12 17:23:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 152,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4488195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While heading for the Seine, Javert was diverted by a situation that rapidly spiralled out of control. Collar, chain, and Jean Valjean: he wishes that he reached the river after all.</p><p>  <i>He walked over to Valjean’s chair and fell to his knees and bowed his head. </i></p><p>  <i>“I am not a guest in your home,” he said, low and deliberate. “Master.”</i></p><p>Dystopian AU slavefic based upon the Dallas 2014 production, with characterisation and events based upon the same and shaken with very liberal splashes of Brick. Primarily worldbuilding, plot, and character development, with the slash happening as a byproduct. <b>Fic has completed posting in its entirety.</b></p><p>Title taken from <i>Demons</i> by Imagine Dragons. Subtitled "A Treatise on the Role of the Law in the Dispensation of Mercy and Justice."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts), [kikibug13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikibug13/gifts).



> This was originally written for the [Valvert Pornathon 2015](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/ValvertPornathon2k15/requests) for Esteliel’s prompt for a slave AU. It was meant to be a short porn ficlet. Then I ended up thinking about how Javert would end up as slave in the first place, and it blew up into an epic with way more worldbuilding, plot, and character development than slash. And without porn. Oops. 
> 
> Esteliel has kindly given me permission to still gift it to her, but I've decided to not post it to the collection because I feel bad. It's called a Pornathon and there's no porn here, only trauma. I'm posting now because I have over 100k written and I think if I don't do it now, I never will.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Will be on the top of every chapter and in the tags. Please take them seriously. This will end up to be a rather nice fic, but it begins on the other end of the solar system. 
> 
> Also, _incredibly slow burn_. I am genuinely, 100% not joking about this; I did say that slash is only a byproduct. The first kiss comes at around the 80k mark, though I’d like to think that I earned the pairing tag much earlier.
> 
> Gifted to Esteliel, who gave me the prompt that began this monster, and to Kiki, who enabled me and held my hand through this entire month of writing and is still handholding me through this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert goes on auction and is bought by someone unexpected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>    
>  cover by [MadMoro](http://madmoro.tumblr.com/post/131635952074/dallas-au-fic-all-sinners-crawl-by-evocates-cant)   
>    
>  **Book I: _demolition_**   
>    
>  **Chapter One: Chained Hound**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Slavery; vaguely-described rape (not of Javert or Valjean); explicit violence, gore, and body horror; depictions of post-traumatic stress disorder, disassociation, and suicidal tendencies; and aspersions as to Marius’s intelligence.

“Now, Inspector, you’re a sight.”

Middle-aged white male, around his early fifties, with dark blond hair that most likely came out of a bottle. The curves of his mouth were twitching upwards into a grin half-hidden by the cigarette smoke curling from his lips.

Javert smiled, wolf’s teeth glinting as bright as the collar around his neck and the chain on the man’s hand. “That’s the wrong term, Monsieur,” he said, tone deliberately mild. “I haven’t been an Inspector for months.”

His head snapped backwards when the blow came, jarring his jaw. Pain blossomed like steel flowers in his mind, but he barely noticed.

In the distance, someone called a name. It was not his.

“Come on now,” his handler said. Smoke wafted over Javert’s face as the man reached down to tug on his chain. “Time to do your part for the economy.”

The stairs towards the backstage of the auction hall were made of mahogany, newly polished. Javert looked at them, thinking of filthy alleyways with trash dumped from pristine buildings. There was an itch under his skin. He ignored it; it had been his companion for months.

After a few more minutes of the air being filled with cries of numbers that had become meaningless, his handler pulled him out towards the stage. The lights were bright and glaring, but Javert’s steps were steady, and he refused to flinch away from them.

A hand shoved at his shoulders. Javert fell to his knees as the announcer stated, “Javert, no first name; murder second degree, multiple charges of prison assaults. Sentence: life.”

Whispers exploded in the hall. Uneasy glances were exchanged. Javert looked at them, the buyers in their perfect suits. The few who met his gaze turned away immediately, covering their mouths as they whispered once more.

_The smell of the sewers carry even in the alley some hundred meters away from them. The sick-orange streetlamps are flickering at the mouth, illuminating the spreading bloodstain colouring the cobblestones on the ground._

_A girl is panting and pulling down her too-short skirt in front of him. Her cheekbone looks broken. Blood creeps around her spiked heels; at his boots, crawling up the ankles, seeping through leather._  
  
“Five thousand francs,” a voice called.

Javert blinked. It called at something within him, that voice; something deeper than the alley and the blood and the raw taste of injustice and the rust-heavy one of failure on his tongue. He saw a white suit and a dark beard, but it was the glasses of the girl beside him that tugged at his memory.

“Five thousand francs,” the announcer confirmed. “Are there any more bids?”

The boy had a name, Javert knew. He should try to remember it; that was the least he could do for the boy to whom he would owe a debt to for saving his life.

(He had never been a fool: this auction was meant to be a farce; to give an excuse to reinstate the death penalty for crimes beyond first-degree murder and organised crime. After all, if Toulon wasn’t suitable for him and no one wanted his collar, then what place could he belong to other than an execution chair?

Once he had seen it being used. The straight-backed thing made of wood the same colour as the backstage stairs; the leather straps; the stark black control panel. The black cap that went over the skull and the horse-bit that went between the teeth. The way a man would shake when turned on, muffled screams echoing around the enclosed room. The stench of piss and shit that would permeate even through the glass, suffocating-thick until it was drowned out by death.

Sometimes he dreamed of it. They were usually good dreams.)

“Sold at five thousand francs,” the announcer said, an odd note in his voice that Javert didn’t bother to decipher. He banged the gavel. “What is your name, Monsieur?”  
__  
Marius, Javert remembered suddenly. The boy’s name was Marius Pontmercy. The only one who went by his first name amongst the kids at the barricade; the schoolchildren who imprisoned him and then released him into Valjean’s hands. The boy who tried to explode the entire furniture-built structure with gunpowder.

“M. Pontmercy, please come down to sign the documents and retrieve your property.”

Javert’s lips twisted as his chain was tugged. 

He should have been used to idea of irony by now. Yet it still stung at the open wound that used to be his wooden heart.

***

“Inspector,” Pontmercy said hesitantly. Javert’s chain was held in one hand gingerly while the other was clasped around his own elbow where the slave handlers had drawn his blood for DNA to use for the collar’s programming. Javert wondered just where the girl had gone.

_There is a body. Its fly is open, a blood-streaked cock lolling from between good cloth._

_The red should be different. It isn’t._

“I haven’t been worthy of that title for months,” he said dully, tired at having repeated the line for the umpteenth time. He paused, then remembered:

“Master.”

Pontmercy flinched immediately at the title. “M. Pontmercy would do,” he said, fingers twitching around the chain. “I… Monsieur, I bought you for a particular purpose.”

Javert raised an eyebrow. He was gratified when Pontmercy looked down immediately, hands fumbling at the chain. Though part of him wondered just _how_ Pontmercy might maintain control of a slave when he seemed so intimidated by him already.

“In fact, it is two particular purposes.” Pontmercy said. “I need you to tell me about a man named Jean Valjean, and also to find a M. Fauchelevent.”

Opening his mouth, Javert closed it again at the look in the boy’s eyes. The man already knew that he was speaking of the same person, apparently, and Javert gritted his teeth instead, biting out his sigh.

Despite the months in Toulon, despite the collar on his throat, it seemed that he was still not free of Jean Valjean.

“I can do that,” he said. Hesitating a moment – Pontmercy _was_ his new Master after all, and Javert knew perfectly well that his next words would be considered insubordination – he continued.

“But before I begin, Master, I have one question. May I ask it?”

Pontmercy looked flummoxed, eyes wide and blinking. “Of course you can,” he said, words tumbling out of him in a rush. “You don’t- you don’t have to ask me permission for that.”

Javert inclined his head at the order. “As you wish.”

“So what is the question?”

“What do you plan to do with me after I have accomplished those two tasks?”

Surely it shouldn’t be possible, but Pontmercy’s eyes seemed to grow even wider. Despite himself, Javert felt satisfaction well up within him: the boy seemed to have no sense whatsoever, buying a dangerous criminal just to ask of him things he could have accomplished while in prison.

“Well, I…” Pontmercy said, dragging a hand through his hair. He looked at Javert for a moment before averting his gaze, the hand now scratching at his beard. “I was thinking that you could tell me more about the workings of the law. I’m studying to be a lawyer, Inspec- Monsieur, and it would be good for my education to have someone who have worked so long within it to advise me.”

_Slave,_ Javert reminded himself. _You’re a slave._

But he was already rolling his eyes. “You have no idea whatsoever, do you,” he heard himself say flatly. 

“That doesn’t matter!” Pontmercy threw up his hands. The chain flew out of his grasp and nearly smacked him on the face. Javert caught it and handed it back, fingers folded around the links.

“I’ll do as you ask,” he said as the boy sheepishly took the chain from him. “But, Master, I suggest that you either start thinking of a way to make use of me afterwards, or start talking to the auction house about getting a refund.” 

Pontmercy opened his mouth. Closed it. He nodded.

***

In the chauffeured car back to Pontmercy’s estate, Javert sat beside Pontmercy with the girl on the other side.

She did not look like her mother. There was too much innocence in her eyes.  
__  
He hears the screams first. _“No, no, no, stop, please Monsieur, please stop--”_  
  
_Instincts have him turning away from his path towards the river and running down the streets towards the alleyway. The night should be quiet; the riots are already over. The screams are an anomaly._

_A girl is pressed against the wall. A man’s hand is wrapped around her thighs, and her head smacks hard against concrete with every thrust. Her nails scratch uselessly at his arms. She is young, fifteen or sixteen at most, dressed in stockings – torn – and a too-short skirt and garters. Spiked heels. Even with the dim lights, he sees the makeup on her face._

_A prostitute._

_She turns towards him. “Help! Please! Help!” she mouths, unable to speak for the hands around her throat. Her eyes are starting to bulge._

_The world shifts. Instead of black leather he sees a white cotton dress. Instead of auburn waves he sees cropped-short dark curls. Instead of a grey wall he sees pavement. She is on her knees, grabbing at his pants leg, her eyes filled with tears._

_Gunshot. The smell of powder, sharp and stinging, fills the air. The girl screams again._

_There is a body slumped against her. Its face is gone, half-blown off by the force of a bullet, a cavernous hollow where its eye and cheek should be. He is suddenly aware of the weight of metal in his hand, shaped like a gun._

_The barrel is hot when he touches it._

__“Fauchelevent is the name of a factory worker I knew in Montreuil-sur-Mer, a town far from here,” Javert heard himself saying. “His life was saved by the Mayor.”

“Mayor Madeleine,” Pontmercy nodded vigorously. “I have heard of him. He was a good man and a good mayor.”

He frowned, falling silent as he glanced at Cosette again.

“I’ve never heard of that name before,” Cosette said, folding her hands and leaning over Pontmercy towards Javert. Her eyes were carefully on his face, avoiding the collar and the chain. “Neither Papa nor Uncle Fauchelevent had ever told me about it. Why wouldn’t Uncle Fauchelevent tell me about a man who saved his life?”

“Sometime during his second term, Madeleine declared himself to be a convict named Jean Valjean,” Javert continued, deliberately not dropping his head into his hands. “Valjean tried to escape from the town, but I caught up with him before he could,” he continued, ignoring Pontmercy opening and closing his mouth like a fish. “He escaped from me and left.”

“Wait,” Cosette said, frowning. “What does this have anything to do with my father?”

“Mademoiselle,” Javert said, looking at the girl straight in the eyes. “Valjean is—”

Pontmercy lunged towards him, hands reaching out for his mouth with a wild desperation in his eyes. His thumb slid across the screen of the collar on his throat. Immediately, it constricted, cutting off Javert’s words, his air, strangling him viciously. 

He didn’t move. There were white stars bursting behind his eyelids; the first stars he had seen in months. Distantly, he could hear Pontmercy yelling, and there were fingers scrabbling at his neck. He was dragged forward by the chain, falling from the seat of the car to the floor. The collar tightened even further, threatening to break his windpipe.

Suddenly, it loosened. Javert’s body gasped for breath, chest heaving. His shoulder ached from where he had slammed it against the car’s floor as he was falling. There were hands clenching at his shirt, dragging him up, and he found himself half-sprawled across someone’s lap. His bare feet scraped the floor.

“Marius, stop.” Water fell on Javert’s face. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes without knowing when he closed them. He looked up to Cosette’s face. There were tears spilling down her cheeks. He looked away.

“You’re not a good liar, Marius,” she said. “And I… I’m not a child anymore.”

She wiped at her face. “I can guess. That’s Papa’s real name, isn’t it? Jean Valjean.”

Pontmercy was looking at him with horror stark in his eyes. He bit his lip and looked away.

“Yes,” Javert tried to say. It came out as a croak. He swallowed past a dry throat and tried again. “Yes.”

His lips twisted, and he found a laugh bubbling up from his chest. It tore at his throat when he swallowed it down, but he had to speak, nonetheless. 

“A parole-breaker and a good mayor. A thief and a man who couldn’t stop giving away his wealth. A convict and the man all three of us owe our lives to.”

The itch beneath his skin was spreading through his nerves, turning into flames that burnt him from within. He shoved himself away from Cosette, falling again – seemed like he was always falling these days – before his hands found the seat and he managed to pull himself to sit down. He didn’t look at their faces.

“Papa is…” Cosette said quietly. “He’s a good man, isn’t he, Inspector?”

Javert wanted to correct her, to tell her like he had her fiancé that he no longer deserved the title. But when he opened his mouth, something else tumbled out instead:

“Yes,” he said, low and raw. “Yes, he is.”

“That’s all I ever needed to know,” Cosette said, nodding. “Papa is Papa. Whatever his past is, it doesn’t change what I know about him.”

Javert turned away from her. He picked up his chain from the ground, feeling the metal – chilled by the air-conditioning in the car – slide over his fingers before he handed it over to them.

“There’s just one more thing about what you said, Monsieur,” Pontmercy said. His hands were hesitant as he took the links. “You said that we all owed our lives to M. Fauchelevent- Valjean. What do you mean by that?”

In the mirrored surface of the car’s window, Javert saw himself. His ragged beard, his too-long hair, the wildness in his eyes. If he had met himself like this months ago, he would have been arrested immediately, or been followed.

He closed his eyes.

“Who do you think took you from the barricades, Master?” he murmured.

“I—” Pontmercy started. His swallow was loud in the car. “I thought that was you.”

This time, he couldn’t help the bark of laughter that wrested itself from his throat. “No. I’m not nearly so kind as to try to help a traitor.”

“Oh,” Pontmercy said, sounding dazed. “ _Oh_.”

Javert turned to him. “Is there anything else you need of me, Master?” he asked. Maybe if they had nothing to do with him, he could try to escape. It would be easy enough to unlock the door and run out to the streets. If one of the cars didn’t kill him, it would only take him a few minutes to run a kilometre and wait for the collar’s nerve disruptor to kick in.

With luck, he would end up dead. Pontmercy would probably receive a refund for his so-soon-dead slave. His debts should have been paid.

Pontmercy opened his mouth, but it was Cosette who leaned forward, her eyes bright and earnest on him.

“We need you to find my father,” she said. Her hands took his, squeezing slightly. 

Looking down at those small, pale hands, he sighed.

“Then you need to tell me every property that your father owns, and also every place you know that he has gone before.”

Apparently not.

***  
_  
_ The bars of Petit-Picpus’s gates were sky-reaching with pointed tips at the top. The message of _Keep Out_ was clear enough even without the board declaring that trespassers would be turned over to the police.

Cosette pushed them open, the hinges creaking. She ignored the ominous sound even as Pontmercy shivered slightly, his hand tightening on Javert’s chain.

It had been easy enough to narrow down the list of where Valjean would be. Javert knew the man well enough despite himself; knew that he would still want to be able to see his daughter – if only from afar – so he would still be in Paris. As an old man, he was more than likely to simply want to return to some place familiar instead of seek out somewhere new.

Hence the convent; and the sisters had been kind and welcoming enough to an alumnus of their school that they told them promptly that Valjean had returned to his post as a gardener with them. It had barely taken two days.

And it seemed that he also worked as a sort of security guard, because he could see Valjean’s bald head approaching from the distance. He carried a shotgun with the inelegance of a man overcome with the discomfort of carrying it. His lips started to curve into a smile when he spotted Cosette walking towards him, the worry-wrinkles at the sides of his eyes smoothing out— until he spotted Javert behind him.

Like a scientist taking note of his specimen, Javert catalogued Valjean’s reaction to seeing him: the sound of the shotgun dropping to the ground; eyes widening in surprise before it changed to shock as his gaze moved down to the collar on his neck and chain in Pontmercy’s hands; the desperate plea for an explanation turned towards Pontmercy; the furrow between his brows when Pontmercy dropped the links as if they were burning red-hot.

“Javert?” Valjean whispered. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

Ignoring him, Javert picked up the chain and swung it around his shoulders. There was no use in making Pontmercy hold it now that Valjean was in sight and Javert could tell that the boy was consumed by guilt and an eagerness to please the man whom he had both wronged and owed his life to.

Instead, he walked forward and picked up the shotgun, hefting its weight on his hands. Valjean took a step backwards instinctively, and Javert pushed away the way his skin burned before he presented the thing, handle-first, towards him.

“You need to be more careful with this,” he said.

Valjean took the gun with jerky motions, his eyes fixed upon the collar on Javert’s neck.

“Papa,” Cosette interrupted, stepping between the two of them. She placed a hand on Valjean’s elbow. The effect is immediate: surprise and suspicion melted out of Valjean’s expression, replaced by affection so heavy and strong that Javert practically choked on it.

Javert had never wondered what it was like to look at someone like that. And he wasn’t about to begin.

“Can we go inside? It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”

“Of course,” Valjean said. His hands fell to the side, the gun’s barrel pointing down to the ground. “Of course we can, Cosette.”

He shot another gaze at Pontmercy, and the boy replied with a gesture that grew beyond a shrug to encompass his entire body with helplessness. Valjean’s lips twitched a little before he shook his head, starting inside the gardens; most likely to the little hut Javert could see a distance ahead.

“Monsieur,” Pontmercy said, hesitantly turning towards him. “Would you mind staying outside while we speak to M. Jean?”

He nodded.

“Javert,” Valjean said, his voice slicing through Javert’s thoughts. “I… Can we speak, afterwards?”

He stared at the man. Parole-breaker, convict, thief; mayor, alms-giver, saviour. His lips twisted, exposing canines in a mockery of a smile.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Valjean looked into his eyes for a long moment. Javert didn’t know what he was looking for, but he seemed to have found it. Because he smiled, bright and open and utterly incomprehensible, before he turned away to lead his daughter and future son-in-law to his cottage.

Seven hundred meters from where Javert was standing to the cottage. The moment the door closed, it would take even Valjean far too long to run a kilometre if Javert walked out now. Over there: open gates and distance and destroyed nerves. A fifty percent chance that he would end up paralysed in a coma instead of dead. The purposes that Pontmercy had bought him for had been fulfilled; five thousand francs paid for services rendered.

The door closed. When Javert moved, his feet took him towards instead of away, and he couldn’t even find it within himself to be surprised.

There was no one who knew how to trap him better than Jean Valjean.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert changes hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Book I: Chapter Two: Bloodied Nails**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Suicidal tendencies; disturbing imagery of death, violence, and gore; depiction of religious faith.

_“There are lines that the police should never cross. You are an instrument of the law; not the law itself,_ Inspector _. Your position should mean that you are irreproachable, but you clearly are not. For what you have done, your sentence is life without parole.”_

_He will always remember the way the judge’s lips twist at those words; the embodiment of mockery that imprints itself at the back of his eyelids._

_That has not been the first bullet he had fired while in the line of duty. Neither has it been the first that had reached its mark._

_Casting his eyes down, he swallows back a laugh that tastes sour and bitter. Where are the blinders that have shielded him for so long?_  
_  
Before the guards beside him can reach for him, he is already getting to his feet himself. He doesn’t protest the judgment, but walk instead out of the courtroom. The guns bracketing him are a cold shield against the crowds outside._

_The view from the police wagon is very different from the backseat than the front. The crisscrossing bars shatter the world._

_He will get used to it. It is nothing more than he deserves._  
  
Valjean’s footsteps were soft on the grass, but Javert had had long years of carefully listening to Madeleine’s feet engraved in his bones. But he didn’t move when Valjean dropped down to sit next to him.

“It’s a pity that it’s not night yet. The stars are beautiful then,” Valjean paused. “What of them you can see from here, at any rate.”

Javert shrugged. He looked at Valjean for a long moment, noting how the wrinkles at the sides of his eyes were still smoothed out.

“You must be relieved,” he said dryly. “I can’t arrest you anymore. You’re finally safe.”

Valjean looked at him for a long moment. Slowly, deliberately, he let his eyes drift downwards. “That’s not a price I would like for you to have paid for my freedom,” he said quietly.

 _That_ dragged another laugh out of Javert, low and hoarse. “That’s some ego you have there,” he said dryly. 

“I’m not saying that you did it for me,” Valjean protested.

Javert didn’t bother to reply.

“Cosette said,” Valjean started slowly. “She said that you told her that I am a good man.”

Of all the words he said that she could have repeated, of course she would have chosen those. 

Javert closed his eyes. “My Master bought me to tell him more about Jean Valjean and to find M. Fauchelevent,” he said, unable to help the mocking drawl at the latter name. “I figured that reassuring his future wife is part of the package deal.”

“Well,” Valjean said after a long moment. “I would believe that if I didn’t already know just how terrible a liar you are.”

“What would you like me to say, Valjean?” Javert asked flatly. “That you made me realise that the world no longer makes sense because a convict can also save lives?” 

He took a deep breath, drawing his knees up. He wasn’t trembling. He didn’t look at Valjean.

“That you finally tore away my shields and made me smell the blood that’s on my hands? That you shattered the only principle I have and forced me to realise that law and justice are not synonymous? That you made me understand that the system I work for is corrupt, and that I have ruined more lives in my defence of it than I can ever count?”

There used to be a rosary in the front pocket of his uniform. It was the same one that Mayor Madeleine had given him years ago, back in Montreuil. Once, he had told himself that it was a reminder of his failure, both because of the imperfections in the beads and the hand that had given it to him.

Now it was gone, long-confiscated, and the left side of his chest burned with its absence and his hand ached for something to hold. He clenched it.

“If you think that, then you’re wrong,” he finished.

Half a truth, half a lie. How far he had fallen. 

The warmth of the hand suddenly on his fist made his eyes fly open. He stared at Valjean, who had his own gaze fixed upon Javert’s wrists, on the bruise-darkened skin around his wrists from the shackles he wore in Toulon. Unlike Valjean’s scars, these would heal and disappear in time.

Still, Javert couldn’t pull himself away.

“No, I don’t think that,” Valjean said quietly. “If only because I believe you’re a good man, Javert, and that you would have realised that eventually, whether I was there or not.”

 _You’re wrong._ Javert’s shoulders shook. 

It _was_ Valjean who first showed it to him. If he hadn’t met this man, he would have believed that he was protecting good men from monsters, staring constantly into the abyss without flinching from its return gaze. 

He should wish for that ignorance. Yet, somehow, he couldn’t bear to give up the knowledge that he was the abyss itself, and he had dragged far too many into its depths.

“You said it yourself, Valjean,” he said. “I did my duty. When I should be doing much more.” 

Valjean’s skin on his was making his skin crawl. He pulled away. The chain slipped from his shoulder and landed with a heavy _thud_ on the grass. 

Dark eyes turned immediately to it. Javert’s mouth twisted into an expression he could not find words to describe, even to himself.

“You might as well take it,” he said. “My life is yours anyway. The law says it belongs to Pontmercy, but,” his lips stretched even further, turning into something grotesque. “What does the law know?”

“If the law knows nothing, then why did you still plead guilty?” Valjean asked.

Javert’s breath tripped in his throat.

_The handcuffs are cold on his wrists. The light of the courtroom is almost blinding in its intensity. The judge’s eyes on him are heavy._

_“Defendant, you are charged with murder of the second degree. How do you plead?”_

_He thinks about the body on the ground._

_His thinks about the girl standing in the witness’s corner. He thinks about blood on her thighs, stark and oily on her skin. He thinks about what she has told him about that body, that man; he thinks about the way her mascara had streaked down her cheeks when she told him in faltering words about how she had heard that the man had hurt other girls too, strangled them and left them dead in alleys. He thinks about girls standing at dim-lit street corners, makeup barely covering scabs and bruises, cradling broken bones._

_He thinks about a woman on the ground, fingerprints on her thighs soon to grow to bruises and bloodstains on her lips. He thinks about the desperation in her death-chased voice. He thinks about the way he looked away from her, his lips curling in disgust. He thinks about his desk at the Palais, with the reports of assaults and murders of prostitutes; beggars; even gamins. All gathering dust._

_He thinks about the warm gun in his hands._

_He thinks about the warm blood on his feet._

_“Guilty, your honour.”_  
  
“How do you know about that?” he asked.

Valjean’s eyes were narrowed on his. Javert was struck, suddenly, by how much time seemed to have gone between Valjean’s question and his own reply. He swallowed, and found himself praying for the first time in months that Valjean would not ask him about it.

“I’m not so old that I have forgotten how to use the news channels,” Valjean said, his voice oddly light. “Even if I have, Cosette reminded me how during her studies.”

“Oh.”

The silence between them made Javert think of the Seine; the way its surface reflected the light of the stars at night. He looked at the gates again. Around five hundred metres.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Valjean prompted.

Javert shrugged, staring at the grass. The blades shivered in the gentle breeze. “I pleaded guilty because I was,” he said. “There’s no denying the evidence.”

“You could have fought for a different charge,” the other man said. He shifted away from Javert, far enough away that the wind had space between them. “Voluntary manslaughter, for example. It fits, especially since you were defending someone else at the time.”

Stifling his surprise down to a raised eyebrow, Javert looked at him. “When did you become an expert in law?”

Valjean shrugged. “There were classes available in Toulon; I took them after I learned how to read.”

“Just what I need,” Javert rolled his eyes. “A reminder that the convict that I hunted ended up being more of a model prisoner than myself.”

Rubbing a hand over his scalp, Valjean sighed. “Calling me that isn’t going to distract me from the question,” he pointed out.

Javert scowled. “Three reasons, then,” he said brusquely, turning his eyes away from Valjean’s too-knowing ones to look up to the darkening sky. Sunset was already here. “Firstly, voluntary manslaughter is only a probable charge when there is no intent to kill. I aimed for his head. Secondly, it wasn’t any form of defence. I charged into the scene and shot him without even announcing myself. If it is manslaughter, then I would have pulled him away first. Thirdly…”

He swallowed. These words were so much more difficult to form on his tongue than the previous ones: “The law _must_ be respected, even if it might be… imperfect,” he closed his eyes. “To put it in your terms: there are still too many innocents that are protected by it.”

Letting out a breath, he turned to Valjean, meeting his eyes straight on. “I’m a policeman, Valjean. I know the law inside and out. Given the circumstances and my position, to appeal for a different charge or to plead not guilty would be to mock the law itself, more than I have already made a travesty of it by breaking it in the first place.” 

“No mercy even for yourself,” Valjean murmured.

Javert’s shoulders shook. “Haven’t you been listening?” he reached out, grabbing Valjean by the collar of his work shirt. Distantly, the policeman in him noted that the muscles seemed to be more atrophied and the bones more stark than they should be after only a few months. “I don’t _deserve_ mercy, Valjean.”

“No one is deserving of mercy,” Valjean said, not even flinching despite the whiteness of Javert’s grip. “If there is anything I have learned over the years, Javert, it is that mercy is always undeserved. One can only try to earn it afterwards through repentance.”

“Is that,” Javert said slowly, “why you pushed your daughter away and tried to make her fiancé believe you to be a terrible person?”

Valjean stilled. “I,” he started. He licked his lips. “I haven’t thanked you for what you did.”

 _Gratitude_. From _Valjean_. Javert’s skin burnt.

“You really don’t listen,” he gritted out. “I told you: I was only fulfilling the purposes that I was bought for.”

“I would thank you anyway,” Valjean insisted. His hand closed around Javert’s wrist. The grip was not nearly as strong as it should be, and Javert felt that distant chill again. “You might have saved my life, Javert.”

“Were you planning to kill yourself then?” Javert mocked.

“Suicide in a sin in the eyes of the Lord,” Valjean said quietly. He turned away from Javert, staring into the distance. “But… with Cosette gone, I… there was little reason for me to live on.”

“Gone,” Javert repeated flatly. “Look at me, Valjean.”

Valjean blinked.

“I’m still alive,” Javert pointed out. “Which means that Pontmercy, and therefore your daughter, is probably still in your hut, doing whatever you told them to do to keep them away.”

“That’s not,” Valjean closed his mouth. “That’s not what I meant.”

He didn’t try to deny that he told the two children to keep away during this entire conversation, Javert noted. It gave him a grim satisfaction to have his suspicions confirmed. Still, that wasn’t nearly enough to stem the tide of irritation he felt.

“No, I suppose that is too sensible.” He rested his wrists on his knees, leaning back and stretching out his legs. “Perhaps you simply had no trust in the daughter you raised to be able to see you for the whole of the man you are instead of only 24601?”

Valjean’s eyes flashed at the sound of the number. Javert stifled vicious triumph.

“I trust Cosette,” Valjean said, voice tight. “But she has Marius now.”

Javert raised an eyebrow, and sighed. “Look, Valjean, I’m not sure which world you come from. It’s surely not this one, because in _this_ world, husbands cannot entirely replace fathers in a woman’s life. I know there are some men who would want to marry their daughters, or have their wives behave like their daughters, but there is a term for such things.” He paused, “And it’s illegal.” 

Valjean stared at him. 

After a moment, he burst out laughing, bending over and holding his stomach as he shook. Javert blinked, completely taken aback by the reaction. Only by it, he told himself, and not by the way his own mouth threatened to twitch upwards as well. _That_ was entirely caused by his victory over Valjean and had nothing to do with mirth at all, much less the frisson of pleasure he felt at having made Valjean laugh.

He let out a breath. “And you had the gall to try to lecture me about having mercy for myself,” he said. His voice, he noted, remained steady.

“No, you… you’re right,” Valjean said softly. “I have been… foolish.”

“You still are,” Javert replied. “Because you’re admitting that I’m right about something.”

Valjean laughed again, shoulders shaking. His dark eyes shone. The fading light of the sun cast shadows on the creases of his face, but they seemed smoother, somehow.

Javert stood. The grass is dry, crunching between his toes. The stars were starting to spread out above him. 

He turned and headed back to the hut.

***

“Monsieur,” Cosette said, standing at the door, her hands clasped at her hips. “Am I intruding?”

“No, Mistress,” Javert said, stepping back to allow her into the room.

 _The_ room, not his, no matter how Pontmercy and Cosette had tried to insist. At first, they had tried to give him a suite of rooms in their wing of the Gillenormand Manor, but Javert was a slave, not a guest, and he had refused. Still, they refused to allow him to sleep in a cupboard or something equally appropriate like he had suggested, instead stowing him into a small room in the attic with a desk, a window, a bed, and little else.

It was still too much. But Javert was tired of insistence.

She was biting her lip at the title. “How many times do I have to ask you to call me ‘Cosette’, Monsieur?” she asked.

“That will not be appropriate,” Javert said dryly. “And your stubbornness in addressing me as ‘Monsieur’ isn’t either. Not for our stations.”

Cosette snorted. She walked to the bed, flopping down to sit on it. “You’re the man who helped my father save my fiancé, Monsieur,” she said. “Part of my current happiness is due to you. That more than balances out whatever money Marius might have spent buying your life, does it not?”

Valjean talked far too much. “I lent a car,” Javert refuted. “That’s not doing much.” 

“You lent a car that allowed Papa to arrive here with Marius with enough time to save his life,” Cosette countered. 

She sighed hard and sharp, shaking her head and dragging fingers through her hair. “Why do I need to _argue_ that you did something good?” she asked the ceiling, looking irate. “You’re just like Papa.”

Immediately, Javert looked away, leaning a hip against the desk. “Valjean and I have nothing in common,” he said. 

The words sound hollow even to himself.

“See,” Cosette said. Her eyes gleamed with a look that belied the soft tone of her voice. “That’s what Papa said you would say.”

Javert barely repressed the urge to roll his eyes. Of course Valjean would know that and even say it to his daughter. “What do you want from me, Mistress?” There was too much bite to his words. He really made for a terrible slave.

A terrible slave; a terrible prisoner. The only thing Javert seemed to be capable of doing was police-work, and yet he had torn himself from that very thing.

“For you to not call me by that, for one,” Cosette said mildly. “But that’s not why I’m here. I…” 

She hesitated. Javert waited.

“Papa refused to move in with us here,” she continued finally, looking down at her hands. “I managed to convince him to move back to the house at Rue Plumet, but I think he’ll be lonely there, and…”

Javert knew what was coming. He stilled his own tongue, and refused to give Cosette the satisfaction of his agreement.

“I asked Marius and he agreed. We… we would like to give your contract to Papa,” she said, looking up and meeting Javert’s eyes. “He needs a friend.”

 _And neither of us know what to do with you now that we have gotten what we wanted_ , Javert heard hovering in the air. His lips twisted.

“We are not friends,” Javert said. “And I doubt that Valjean would like to have _me_ constantly dogging his heels.” 

Though it would be something they were used to: hounds and lapdogs were much of the same kind, only differing by the type of chain pinned to their collars and the hands holding it.

Cosette shook her head. “I heard Papa laugh yesterday,” she said. “I haven’t heard him laugh so freely and so hard at anything since I was a child.”

No, not a lapdog then; a trained creature instead, made to entertain. Perhaps one with a frilled collar running on balls, like those found in a circus. Javert barked a laugh, and smiled with teeth bared at Cosette’s flinch.

“I’m at your disposal to do as you wish,” he said, bowing low with one arm swept out. “Mistress.”

“Monsieur,” Cosette stood from the bed, reaching out to grab his flung-out hand with both of her own. “Neither of us would be willing to do this if it is against your wishes. But I _have_ noticed that you’re not comfortable here, not with Marius or myself.”

“And you think I will be comfortable with Valjean.”

Cosette’s smile was wry, and she shrugged a little. “Papa can make anyone feel comfortable around him,” she said.

 _She knows his history now_ , Javert reminded himself. _But she has never seen him before he took her_. She might know him to have been convict, but she had never seen the burning hatred in Jean-le-Cric’s eyes. She might have known him to be a Mayor, but she had never known the way Madeleine had always looked behind him, as if terrified that the shadows of the past would devour him entirely.

Javert closed his eyes. He knew Valjean, and he couldn’t even think of the words to refute her.

“Perhaps,” he said instead.

“That’s settled, then,” she said, releasing him and stepping back. There was so much satisfaction caught within her dark eyes that Javert knew protesting would be futile.

All anger had been drained from him from the first bullet he fired. Javert could only accept, lowering his head.

“Of course, Mistress.”

Cosette nodded, making to leave. She stopped suddenly at the door, turning back and grinning at him.

“Oh, and if your contract is with Papa, then you _will_ have to call me Cosette!”

“Maybe,” Javert said, his mouth helplessly smiling. “Mistress.”

***

Valjean’s house at Rue Plumet seemed to have come out of one of the postcards hoarded by young people with too little sense and too many dreams: two storeys with white walls, a red-tiled roof, and a sprawling, slightly neglected garden on the grounds, all of which glittering-glimmering in the mid-afternoon sun. Javert stood with feet on grass, raising a hand to poke at a yellow-green apple on a tree.

Given Valjean’s knowledge of the Bible and devotion to God, Javert wondered if this particular tree, in the centre of the garden, was a deliberate decision.

When he arrived in the morning, Javert had stayed only for a minute listening to Valjean’s conversation with Pontmercy and Cosette about him – one that rapidly devolved into an argument – before he left for the garden. He had made a circle around it first, judging the distance and testing the collar. He could not leave: apparently Valjean had set locks on the gates of the house that could only be opened using a particular passcode, and he didn’t have it.

Even now, he wondered why he simply did not climb.

Somehow Cosette – because it could only have been her – had won the argument, and Javert found himself in a car with Valjean, travelling to the auction house. Cosette and Pontmercy both had attempted conversation, but Javert had no intention of speaking, and the storm in Valjean’s eyes seemed to occupy the man fully.

He had been given a new collar, one that suited his new master the convict much better: no need for incriminating DNA or fingerprints, but using voice commands instead. When the metal clipped over his throat and the chain was handed to Valjean, Javert had smiled.

“Well,” he said. “Look at who now holds the chain.”

Valjean had looked at him with a gaze as deep as it was incomprehensible, and he turned away. They did not speak in the car when returning to Rue Plumet, and neither did Valjean say a word about what he would do with Javert now that he had him in his grasp, the tables fully turned. Then he went inside the house.

Killing a slave, Javert thought, was not illegal. It was simply the destruction of a person’s own property. Valjean could easily spin a story of self-defence.

The door opened. Javert turned, watching in silence as Valjean walked towards him. The other man didn’t say a word, simply reaching out towards Javert’s neck. Javert tipped his head back, feeling rough calluses brush his skin as Valjean unhooked the chain from the collar and started winding the long links in his hands.

“I’m not going to lead you around like a dog,” Valjean said, his voice low and quiet. His gaze rested heavily, and Javert’s hand found itself on his collar, testing its give even though he knew it all too well by now.

“It’s meant to keep Masters safe. To stop slaves from attacking,” his lips flashed a cruel smile. “Or running.”

“Are you going to run?” Valjean asked.

Javert looked at the gates of the compound. The bars were long and straight, with a single horizontal line bisecting the centre. They would be difficult to climb, but not impossible. 

“No.”

Valjean’s eyes searched his, brows burrowed. “Good. Because I would hate for you to turn into a liar or a hypocrite after so many years,” he said, almost wry. Stepping back, he swung the arm holding the chain over his shoulder before he glanced at Javert again.

“Will you come in now?”

“You wanted me to?” Javert raised an eyebrow.

“I left the door open,” Valjean pointed out, arm waving vaguely in the direction of the house.

Javert closed his eyes, letting out a hissing breath. “Of course. I see how it is. You expect me to read your mind now,” he stated flatly. Then, before Valjean could reply, he shook his head. “Do you pity me?”

_Is that why you agreed to this?_

“No,” Valjean said, his voice too loud. He clicked his mouth shut and sighed. “No, I… I’m _angry_ , Javert.”

“What?” Javert blinked. “You’re still angry over my telling Pontmercy and Cosette? What happened to that mercy you’re so known for?”

“It’s not about that,” Valjean said. He hesitated, starting to walk towards the house. Javert, curious, followed him, closing the door behind him.

The chain made a dull thud as Valjean dropped it onto the shoe rack beside the door. He looked at it for a long moment, tension seeming to come out of nowhere to wrap around his entire body before he tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling.

“Your sentence wasn’t fair,” Valjean said. “Your punishment now isn’t fair. There is no justice in either.”

The itch underneath his skin was growing. “I killed a man,” Javert pointed out.

“To save a woman from something that should never happen to anyone,” Valjean said quietly. “And in doing so, you saved others from having the same happening to them.”

“Arresting him could have done that,” Javert stated flatly. “That’s what I _should_ have done.”

Valjean turned around, looking at him with a too-knowing look on his face. And Javert couldn’t help but turn away, because he knew the foolishness of his own words: the man had been wealthy with strong connections; the woman attacked was considered nothing more than scum by the world. The man would’ve been able to say whatever he liked and gone free if he was arrested.

Once, Javert would have agreed to such a judgment. Once, he had trusted in the sentences passed down by the judges in the court of law.

“If there’s anything that is unfair,” he said quietly, looking at Valjean, “it is that you were sentenced to five years for theft and B&E. That’s the same number of years for voluntary manslaughter.”

A single loaf of bread: equal to the man’s life. He didn’t miss the widening of Valjean’s eyes.

“Before you ask, this isn’t a new revelation,” he said dryly. “It’s the rest of your record that had me chasing you for so long. The multiple escape attempts. The long list of fraud. Which, by the way, you’re still committing right now.”

Valjean cocked his head to the side. “So why haven’t you reported me?”

“The word of a criminal doesn’t have much weight.”

“Funny that you said that,” Valjean said, crossing his arms. “Because I know for a fact that the police used plenty of informants who were either criminals or ex-convicts. And I know that those who are convicted would get lesser sentences if they report on the crimes of others.”

“Do you insist on making me repeat myself, Valjean?”

“No,” Valjean said after a long moment. “I don’t think I need to.”

He turned away from Javert, moving inward to the house. Unlike the outside, the interior of the place was much barer: a couch, a flat-screen television when Javert knew he could more than afford a hologram projector, and a kitchen off to the side. The rooms, Javert knew, probably looked the same. The only items of luxury seemed to be the shelves of books and the antique-looking radio tucked into a corner. 

“I’ll make dinner,” Valjean was saying. “And after that, well. I’m going to read, and you can do whatever you wish.”

Javert blinked at him before he snorted. “So that’s what you’re going to do with me, then?” he asked. “Treat me like a guest in your home?”

Valjean turned to look at him. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, an expression half-familiar and half-strange to Javert, before he shook his head.

“Just for today, because I don’t have work,” he said. “But tomorrow… I think I’ll bring you along. They’ll always need more hands.”

“You work,” Javert said, flatly.

“Of course I do,” Valjean said, clearly amused. “I might not need the money, but surely you don’t think that I spend all day idling about the house, do you?”

“I don’t spend my time wondering about the past times of convicts.”

Somehow, for some reason, that made Valjean laugh again. “You still won’t need to do that,” he said, stepping into the kitchens. “Because I’ll show you, tomorrow.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Javert said, and, distressingly, it didn’t come out as nearly as sarcastic as he wanted it to.

Valjean noticed, of course, and he flashed him another smile before he disappeared behind the door. Javert stood there in the hall, looking at the room, listening to the sounds of Valjean bustling in the kitchen, before he followed.

It was only later, much later, that he realised that he called Valjean by his name even after the contract was signed.

***  
_  
Sound of blood dripping: slow, constant. Filmy rust stuck in his nose. Straight out of a film; blood starts to congeal the moment it meets the air, and he knows perfectly well how it smells._

_When he focuses, the near-headless body is lying in front of him._

_He stands there, waiting, a strange curiosity growing inside him as the fingers start to twitch. Slowly, very slowly, knees bend, feet find cobblestones. The corpse stumbles a little before finding its balance again, fingers splayed against the wall as it rises._

_“This is what you want to do to me,” it says with Valjean’s voice._

_He has no neck, but he can still look away. He has no waist, but the packet of cigarettes he keeps inside the usual pocket is still there. He has no hands, but he can still draw one out to place between his lips. He has no tongue or lung, but the tobacco still sits within him._

_“No,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking about you at all.”_

_The corpse is looking at him with its one remaining eye barely attached to its neck. It twitches slightly as it moves towards him, feet carrying the sound of clanging chains. He waits for it to get closer, and has no body to flinch with when it reaches out towards him._

_What teeth remains are stained with blood – thick and blackened, half-burned – and it bares them in a grimace shaped like a smile._

_“Liar,” it says. “Thieves and rapists and murderers are all the same to you.” It draws his gun out of his pocket, thumbing the barrel. “Every time you press the trigger, you think of killing me.”_

_“I’ve never tried to kill you,” he says. “Only arrest you.”_

_It makes a horrific wheezing sound, red-splattered shoulders shivering and shaking. It is, he realises, laughing._

_“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” it mocks. “You know it’s the same.”_

_He doesn’t close his eyes; doesn’t dare to shield himself from the accusing stare. “It’s not my fault,” he hears himself say, not even recognising his own voice. It has turned into a croak. “You could’ve remained an honest man.”_

_That eye whirls in its socket. It smiles again. Broken skin flaps in the rising breeze. “You could’ve been a good man,” it murmurs. “Like me.”_

_When those hands press against his chest – solid and insubstantial both – and pushes him hard, they are a blessing._

_And he is falling. Falling and falling, hitting water when there should only be ground beneath his feet. The river roars in his ears, a litany of_ guilty, guilty, guilty _._

_He opens his mouth and swallows filth and accusation both, letting it all fill the hollowness within._

__When he opened his eyes, breath coming so fast in his throat that it scraped the skin inside, he was sitting up with blankets tangled around his legs and Valjean was standing by the doorway of the room. The streetlight slicing in from the open blinds skittered over his bald head, turning it into another moon.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. He swallowed hard.

“I heard you shouting,” Valjean said, his voice carefully mild. “I just wanted to check if you’re alright.”

There was a hand over his throat, he realised. Nails scrabbling over the metal collar on his neck. It was his own hand; he stared at it for a moment, noticing dully the blood collected underneath the nails.

Valjean was moving closer. He watched him with narrowed eyes, feeling like a beast with his paw caught in a trap, but all Valjean did was to open a drawer and pull out a bunch of tissues from the nightstand and hand them to him silently.

He took them. His hand balled into a fist, crumpling the soft paper. “Well, I’m awake now, so you can go back to sleep,” he said.

The look in Valjean’s eyes when they looked at him was one he was learning to despise: dark and slightly narrowed, shadows etched into the lines at the edges filled with a thousand incomprehensible things that he couldn’t even begin to understand.

But Valjean nodded and started to move out of the room again. He watched him, realising for the first time that Valjean slept in only cotton pyjamas bottoms, his prison tattoo, lash marks, and shackle scars practically gleaming in the oily orange light from the window.

“Wait,” he said. He licked his lips. “Did I… Did I say anything in my sleep?”

There must be some sort of curse laid upon him, he thought dizzily. That was the only reason why he was asking things he didn’t want answers to.

Valjean stopped at the doorway. He turned halfway, and his voice when he answered was so soft that Javert had to strain himself to hear:

“Mea culpa,” he said. “You keep saying ‘mea culpa’, over and over.”

Javert froze. He opened his mouth, but no words escaped. But it seemed that Valjean wasn’t expecting any, because he left the room, closing the door behind him.

 _My fault. Guilty_.

Months waiting for a trial, months in prison. And it was only now that he had to relearn how to breathe.

Slowly, he laid his head down between his knees. He tried to ignore the way his fingers rubbed against each other, trying to shift the beads of a non-existent rosary.

There were, he noted, spots of red on Valjean’s pristine white sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dallas 2014 did have Javert with a rosary. The bit about Madeleine giving it to him is, however, unashamedly stolen from the 2012 movie.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert spends his first day with his new owner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Book I: Chapter Three: Living Orders**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Self-harm; philosophical discussions about religion; OC (who isn’t going to be particularly important); discussion of domestic abuse, both spousal and parental.

Javert had risen with the sun for the past three decades; it would take more than a few months to change that particular habit.

Still, when he left the room, already dressed, he wasn’t surprised to see Valjean already in the kitchen, sipping on a cup that smelled of tea.

“There’s coffee in the machine,” Valjean said. His lips quirked up slightly. “I still remember your distaste for tea.”

That was far from the first thing Javert had expected him to say. In fact, that hadn’t made the top ten list. He had expected an interrogation of the events of the previous night, or even a few veiled and polite questions. This, however… it was incredibly annoying.

He walked over to Valjean’s chair and fell to his knees and bowed his head. 

“I am not a guest in your home,” he said, low and deliberate. “Master.”

There was the sound of porcelain clicking against wood. Then Valjean’s hand was in his field of vision, a finger hooking into the circle at the front of Javert’s collar, made to hold the chain. He tugged upwards, gently, until Javert was forced to meet his gaze.

“I order you to get a cup of coffee,” Valjean said, his voice equally soft. “After you have done that, I’m ordering you to go out shopping with me, and to accept the clothes I’m going to buy you. When we return, you will take a shower, then you’ll come with me as I go to work.”

“Is this your brand of mercy?” Javert asked, barely able to keep from snarling.

Valjean gave him a lopsided smile. He didn’t let go of Javert’s collar as he sipped once more at his tea. “Yes,” he said. “For myself.”

“What?”

“I will treat you like a human being,” he said, still in that damnable calm tone. “Because if I treat you as anything less, I will end up destroying myself.” The finger on the collar tugged even harder, and Javert found himself half-raising to his feet as Valjean’s face came down until there was barely an inch separating them.

“So forgive me, Javert,” he continued, “for not treating you like you want me to.”

Javert’s breath hitched. He clamped his mouth shut before he forced himself to let go, breath escaping him in a sharp hiss over Valjean’s skin. “Yes, Master.”

Valjean nodded. He released him, leaning back. Javert got to his feet, and walked over to the counter to pick up a cup to pour himself goddamned coffee.

“Oh, one more thing,” Valjean said, and his voice was casual enough for Javert’s head to snap back and his eyes to narrow, instincts screaming in alarm.

“I order you to never call me ‘Master’,” he said. “Never again.”

Javert’s lips twitched. He turned away, pouring from the machine with more care than was warranted. Setting the cup down on the table, he smiled, baring teeth.

“Yes, _Sir_.”

“Ah,” Valjean said. “Let me rephrase: You’re only allowed to refer to me as ‘Valjean’ from now on in private. In public, you are allowed to use ‘Fauchelevent’. If you’re asked about it, then you will explain that you have been ordered to do so.”

Lifting the cup to his mouth, Javert took a sip of it with the exact precision that Valjean had used earlier. “You’re very well-versed in spotting loopholes, _Valjean_ ,” he said.

“No,” Valjean said, the smile coming back again. “I’ve just learned to think like you after so many years.”

There was absolutely nothing Javert could say in response to that. He could only throw the too-hot coffee back, glaring defiantly at Valjean as he felt the liquid burn his tongue and down his throat.

Valjean only stood, walking over to the fridge to hand him a bottle of water.

“Drink.”

The look in his eyes made it another order. Javert drank. The chill tasted of bitter benediction. 

***

After they went to the sole mall in town – a trip where Javert found himself getting overly-acquainted with the back of Valjean’s head to avoid glaring at those who stared and whispered at the sight of his chain in Valjean’s hand – they headed back home with his new clothes and shoes. Valjean also bought a whole bunch of very disparate supplies: a small army’s worth of children’s clothes; another army’s worth of diapers and sanitary napkins; women’s clothing; men’s clothes that were in neither of their sizes; sneakers in a variety of designs and sizes; enough over-the-counter medication to stock a hospital; three different pairs of reading glasses of different prescriptions… 

Valjean didn’t own a car, any type of car. So Javert had to carry everything back during the over-a-kilometre walk, and it was only the constant prompt in Valjean’s eyes that stopped him from asking what the hell were all these for.

He dumped everything on the living room’s floor the moment they entered the house and headed straight to fulfil the second order that Valjean had given him for the day.

Pontmercy and Cosette had tried to offer him new clothes beyond the state-regulated outfit that he had been wearing since his incarceration – orange jumpsuit with bare feet. But he had denied it, because his contract came with three other sets of the same outfit – a slave should be easily identifiable, after all, just like a freed criminal had to be identifiable by his parole papers – and five thousand francs were already too much to spend on a creature like him.

The first and primary law for slaves was to obey the word of their master. Money and the supposed better life outside the walls of a prison had bought obedience. And so when Valjean decreed that he was to dress like anyone else on the street, Javert had to obey. 

He looked at himself in the mirror. Black slacks – Valjean had looked at the racks of jeans and laughed before walking past, and Javert still didn’t know what to think about that – and black T-shirt with an open collar. 

Javert had worn a uniform for most of his life. He could recognise himself even in the orange jumpsuit, because it was a uniform; something that defined him and caged in his self. Now…

The metal around his throat gleamed in the bathroom light like a decoration. If he just added ear studs and a few bracelets, he would look like one of those stupid children he used to arrest for public disturbances.

His hand hooked around the collar, pulling it out. The scabs from his nails were brown, almost black. Another fashion statement; his lips twisted.

Turning away from himself, he yanked open the door and walked out. Valjean was sorting through the piles of shopping and Javert’s new shoes – black leather, and far too expensive despite all Valjean had said that they was meant to last– had already been set out. He looked at them before shrugging to himself, shoving his feet in.

If he was to be damned by mercy, then he might as well go all the way with it.

Valjean’s gaze was growing familiar enough to him that he turned immediately. The man didn’t say a word, merely raising his eyebrows and jerking his head towards the pile.

“I can’t help you if I don’t know what they’re for,” Javert pointed out.

“You can ask,” Valjean replied. 

He glared. It had no effect whatsoever.

“What,” he finally gritted out, “are they for.”

“One of my jobs is at a homeless shelter,” Valjean said easily. “Sometimes, we have people come in to help us as volunteers, so we pay them with necessities.”

He picked up one of the smaller bags, opening it to show Javert its contents: a pair of reading glasses, a pair of sneakers, and two sets of clothes. “This is for one of them. He’s a couple of years younger than me, paroled a couple of years ago but he still can’t find a job.”

Javert looked at the rest of the supplies. “There can’t be enough volunteers to warrant all of this,” he said.

“Most of the basic supplies are for the shelter,” Valjean replied, nudging at the bunch of huge bags which Javert saw contained the medicines, sanitary napkins, and diapers. “We offer them for free.”

“Valjean,” Javert said, resisting the urge to rub a hand over his face, or even sigh. “I’m not sure that you actually understand the definition of a job. You _receive_ money. Not give it away.”

“What makes you think I’m not getting paid for this?”

Javert gave him a flat stare. After a moment, Valjean laughed again.

“I call it a job because it’s something for me to _do_ ,” he said, standing up. There was an odd stiffness to his movements that made Javert want to reach out and… something, he wasn’t sure what. “I don’t need more money.”

 _No, because you have a fortune that you earned dishonestly,_ Javert wanted to say, but he knew even before speaking that it wasn’t true. Madeleine was a lie, but the factory and its profits were both honest enough: Javert had checked over the auditing himself.

In the eyes of the law, the money was dishonest, and should be confiscated. But what did the law know?

“So you give it all away to people who could’ve applied for pensions,” he said instead.

Valjean’s eyes turned reproachful. “Javert,” he said.

There had been reforms in the decades since Valjean’s first imprisonment: the unemployed now received some money from the government every month. The requirements list for receiving the pension was possibly longer than Javert’s arm. The applicant must: be married, had a family, had a clean record, had worked before for an upward of two years at a stretch, and not have a chronic illnesses, whether mental or physical. And the highest amount was capped at fifty francs a month: just enough for either rent in a tiny room, or food; never both.

“They could’ve gotten a job,” he tried to protest.

“Some of the people in the shelter are ex-convicts,” Valjean said quietly. “You know just as well as I do how hard it is for those on parole to get honest employment.”

“I…” Javert started. He had heard, of course: many recidivists had protested that they only turned again to crime because they would’ve starved otherwise; that they had tried their best to live as honest men but simply _couldn’t_ because no one would employ them.

He had thought them to be excuses.

 _Please, monsieur. Have mercy! All I’m trying to do is to feed my family. They depend on me. Please let me go, monsieur. I won’t do it again, I swear I won’t!_  
  
There were too many voices for him to be able to separate each of them.

Valjean’s hands were on his wrists. Javert jerked, trying to escape, but Valjean’s grip on him was almost inhumanly strong.

“Stop it,” Valjean hissed at him. “ _Stop it_ , Javert.”

What was he supposed to stop? What the hell was he not supposed to do?

Oh. His hands were on his neck again, nails close to flesh. Javert froze, lips half-parted, his eyes fixed upon Valjean’s. Those dark eyes had turned incomprehensible again.

They stood there. The house was silent except for the sounds of their breathing. Javert didn’t know what Valjean was looking for when he stared at him like that, but Valjean seemed to have found it, because Valjean nodded to himself, stepping backwards and letting him go.

Javert fell to his knees. The world was spinning, tilting at its axis. The centre could not hold. He could not breathe.

Metal dropped into his hands. Cool links ran over skin. Javert scrambled, clicking the hook over the ring in his collar, gripping onto the metal as if it was his only lifeline.

“There aren’t just ex-convicts,” Valjean said, his voice coming from a long distance away. “There are people whose work depended on the seasons as well. Children abandoned by their parents, too young to be allowed to work or whom nobody would hire. The shelter tries to give them a job. Keep them busy; keep them clean.”

“You should hate me,” Javert heard himself saying, his mouth and throat working independently of his mind. “You should be glorying in seeing me like this. You should be taking your revenge. If you don’t want to dirty your hands then you can even order me to kill myself, because that’s legal—”

The punch was entirely unexpected. His head jerked backwards, eyes flying open as he sprawled over the ground. Valjean stood over him, face twisted into an expression that had his clothes shifting in Javert’s mind into an orange jumpsuit, his beard turning in the matter of seconds from neat to scraggly.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Valjean growled. He had dropped to his knees in front of Javert, grabbing him by new shirt and chain and dragging him up to face him. “Don’t you ever dare to say that to me again!”

Javert stared. Of all the things he thought Valjean would be angry about, all of the things that Javert thought would turn him back into the convict who surely wished to kill him… a couple of _facts_ had been at the bottom of the list.

“What, that I wish you’d tell me to die, if you don’t want to kill me yourself?” he said, hysteria creeping into his voice. 

If Valjean could get angry at facts, then Javert would give him _facts_.

“You’ve killed me the moment you let me go at the barricades,” he said, and laughed at the way Valjean immediately let him go, stumbling back. “A convict giving me _mercy_. A thief turned into practically a _saint_. I had pillars, you know, and you’ve _destroyed them._ ” __  
  
“Javert—” Valjean tried to say, but Javert wasn’t listening anymore.

“After I left your front door,” of this bloody house he was kneeling in, “I didn’t immediately kill that man.”

Maybe the punch had knocked something in his head, the last straw that broke the dam, and all the words were pouring out.

“I went back to the police station. Drafted a very long email and _sent_ it as my resignation.”

“You resigned? Javert—”

“Shut up,” Javert said, vicious. “Listen. See, it wasn’t good enough to just resign from the police. It wasn’t nearly good enough. I had to- I was walking towards the Seine—”

“Collar: close.”

Metal squeezed, pressing into his windpipe, cutting off his air. Javert choked on his own words, gasping with eyes wide. _Finally_ , he thought.

“Collar: open.”

He breathed.

“Collar: close.”

He didn’t.

“Collar: open.”

Javert fell over, elbows slamming against the floor. Stars danced around his eyes. But he didn’t even have a chance to get his breath back, much less demand _why_ Valjean wasn’t killing him properly, before Valjean grabbed him by the hair and dragged his face up until their eyes were meeting.

“Is that what you want me to do, Javert?” Valjean asked, voice still damnably calm. “Is this what you think you deserve?”

“Yes,” Javert said, spitting out the word. “Damn you. Yes.”

Suddenly, incongruously, Valjean’s hand gentled. His grip turned into a stroke, a caress, and he picked Javert up as if he was nothing. Javert’s hand clawed at his shoulder, his back, but Valjean’s strength was unyielding despite how gaunt he looked compared to months ago, and he set Javert down on the couch. His hand was heavy on Javert’s shoulders, pushing him down until he sank down on the cushions.

He dropped to his knees. The anger in those eyes was gone. “I’m not going to give it to you,” Valjean said.

Javert stared at him. “What?” he choked out.

“It’s not a punishment to give you what you want,” Valjean said. “So I’m not going to give it to you.”

“I don’t,” he started. Stopped. Licked his lips. “I don’t understand.”

This was starting to feel like déjà vu.

“You can’t make up for what you’ve think you’ve done by killing yourself,” Valjean told him. He hesitated before letting out a breath that was nearly heavy enough to be a sigh. “Honestly, I think you’ve more than made up for it already. To me, at least.”

“Made up—” Javert stared. He seemed to do that a lot around Valjean. “ _How_?”

Valjean smiled, soft at the edges. “You’ve given me back my daughter. My life. And you’ve given me a son, or one that’s as good as one.”

Javert’s shoulders shook. “That’s not nearly enough.”

“You’re a policeman,” Valjean said. “Not a judge.”

“I’m a slave,” he corrected. “Not a policeman.” And he would never be one again.

“Well,” Valjean said. “My point still stands. You’re not a judge, Javert. Especially not for yourself. All men are their own harshest critic, and you’re one of the worst of all.”

“So who,” his voice failed him. His throat hurt – from the collar a few moments ago, from the burns in the morning, from everything. “So who do you suggest judge me now? _God_?”

“You will not accept God’s mercy for yourself,” Valjean said. He looked uncertain for a moment before he seemed to force himself to press on. “So I will do so.”

Javert looked at him before he barked a laugh, shaking his head. “You will,” he said, shaking his head. “ _You_ will. You, the man of mercy. You, who said that you will forgive me when I have done nothing to earn it. _You_.”

“Exactly,” Valjean nodded. His smile looked forced. “So we have both extremes, and let’s see if we can meet in the middle.”

“Judgment is not meant to take into consideration the opinions of the judged,” Javert argued.

“It will now,” Valjean said, shrugging as if things truly were so simple. “And we will decide that you are forgiven when you finally feel that you are.”

Javert laughed again, mirthless and harsh. “That’s not going to happen until I’m dead.”

“Which won’t happen for a long time yet,” Valjean said, the spectre of 24601 flashing in his eyes again. He gripped Javert’s chain and raised it. “And we will have time enough for the debate.”

Impossible. This man was utterly impossible. Yet there was nothing Javert could do about it: Valjean had trapped him once again. Not with his strength, as Javert had expected, but with his words and his mercy.

His damnable mercy.

He stood up and bowed low. “As you wish, Valjean,” he said, making sure the name was said in the same tone he had been taught that slaves should address their masters.

Valjean was looking at him again, dark eyes once more incomprehensible. Then he sighed. 

“No, of course not,” he murmured to himself, shaking his head. He stepped back, eyes turning towards the bags.

“Now come on, we’re going to the shelter,” he said. “Or I’m going to be late.”

Javert jerked slightly, staring at him. “You’ll let me near those people?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

Valjean raised an eyebrow at him. “Of course,” he said. “What better way to learn mercy than to see it being given, and to try to give it yourself?”

Before Javert could even think of a reply, he was already reaching down, as if to pick up the nearest bag. Javert took it before his fingers could close around it, swinging it around his shoulders.

“I’m the pack mule at your service,” he murmured. “Valjean.”

***

The woman – mid-twenties, Hispanic, scar across the cheek – who met them at Saint-Germain Mission Shelter raised both eyebrows the moment she spotted Valjean: first at the sight of his nearly-empty hands, then at the slave walking behind him. Javert watched, silent, as Valjean shrugged helplessly.

“Hah,” she said. “Now that’s a sight I didn’t think I would ever see.”

Then, to Javert’s surprise, she turned towards him and held out a hand. “Clarisse Langlois,” she said. “What’s your name?”

He blinked first at her, then at her hand. Then he bowed low, bending himself almost in half like a slave should. “Javert, Madame Langlois,” he murmured.

Without even needing to look at her, Javert knew she started at his name. “Inspector,” she returned.

“Not anymore,” he said, lifting his head just enough to meet her gaze. “I’m surprised that you have heard of me.”

“Some of the guys here sometimes talk about the police,” she told him, voice a little wry. “When they do, yours is the name that comes up most often.”

That was… Javert’s eyes darted towards Valjean involuntarily. Why on Earth would this man choose to work at a place where he would have to hear the name of the hound who hunted him on a regular basis?

Valjean met his gaze and shrugged.

“I didn’t think Fauchelevent here would ever take a slave,” she remarked.

“He did it as a favour,” he cut in before Valjean could say anything. “Fauchelevent and I are… old acquaintances.”

The eyebrow went back up again. “He ordered me to address him by that, Madame Langlois,” he answered the unspoken question. “The clothes I currently wear are by his orders as well.”

Valjean really did cover the major eventualities.

“Ah,” she nodded. “Now _that_ does sound like him.”

She turned around, walking back through the doors. “By the way, call me Clarisse. Madame Clarisse, if you insist. I don’t like my last name.”

Later, when Javert’s chain was draped around his shoulders in a mockery of a scarf – not even Valjean’s authority over him could overtake the law that slave chains should never be removed in public – he was set to peeling potatoes for what he was told was the night’s stew. For reasons _entirely_ opaque to Javert, Clarisse decreed that they were to help out in the kitchens to prepare food – “just the two of you” – instead of distributing what Valjean bought to the volunteers already present.

“Clarisse started off as a volunteer,” Valjean was telling him, his own hands busy as he chopped cabbages. Javert didn’t even need to ask why _he_ was here _,_ doing grunt work when he could be receiving gratitude from the multitudes outside; he already knew what Valjean would say.

“Her parents refused to take her in after she ran away from her abusive husband, so she ended up living on the streets. One of the other volunteers told her about this place. She just started coming in and helping one day, and eventually she was good enough to be given a job.”

Javert made an affirmative sound, dumping a potato into the pot of cold water waiting for it. He picked up another and started again. “Why can’t you hire all of the volunteers here that way?”

“The shelter survives mostly on donations from Saint-Germain-des-Prés congregation,” Valjean said, lifting his eyes from the vegetables to meet Javert’s. “We can’t afford to hire all of them.”

He paused, hands resting on the chopping board before starting again. “Besides, I’ve learned that throwing money at things don’t solve problems.”

“What?” Javert turned, eyes widening. “You did?”

The reaction was entirely sincere. Even though Valjean obviously didn’t believe it, with the way he was frowning on Javert.

“Yes,” he said frostily. Then he sighed. “I’ve had time to think, after leaving. To do some soul-searching, you might say. And I realised… No matter how much money I gave on a certain day, the same people would always come back for more. And sometimes… sometimes, the money I gave them ended up going into drink or, even worse, drugs.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I was being arrogant, thinking that I can save people by just throwing money at them and walking away. Selfish even, really. When I realised that, I thought about what you said: that it’s easier to be kind than it is to be just.”

“Yet you still come here,” Javert said, confused. “What are you doing rather than throwing money at people here?”

Valjean glanced at him before he laughed, shaking his head. “We give them necessities,” he said softly. “Food, shelter, a soft bed, clothes, medicine. Books, sometimes. Things that make people down on their luck remember that they are _human_ again. Things that give them respite, even for a single night, from all the burdens they’re carrying so that they can have hope again.”

He turned to Javert, giving him that odd lopsided smile again. “Mercy is not meant to save a person, Javert. Neither is it to give blindly. Mercy is… it is to see with clear eyes what a person needs and give it to them while hoping that it will lend them the strength to save themselves.”

There was something stuck in Javert’s throat. His hand went to the collar – avoiding Valjean’s suddenly narrowed eyes – and adjusted it slightly.

“God helps all those who help themselves,” he quoted. “I figured you would’ve thought that to be an excuse for cruelty.”

Valjean went back to the vegetables, starting to chop them. “I don’t agree with the spirit with which that’s often said,” he said, sounding contemplative. “But the line is true nonetheless: I must not attempt to carry them, but instead give a hand so they _can_ help themselves.”

Javert opened his mouth, and closed it again when he realised that Valjean wasn’t looking at him but was instead staring unfocused at the wall.

“The Lord Christ warned Peter that he would deny him three times before the rooster crows,” he said finally, voice low and soft. “Years ago, I thought that strange: why did Christ not _tell_ Peter not to deny him? Why did he let Peter go through so much suffering? Would it not be better to have saved him from that?

“Now I know. If Christ had ordered Peter not to do so, then it would not be sincere. It would be Christ’s wish, not Peter’s. Peter’s faith must come from his own desire, not blind devotion. Perhaps this is blasphemy, but I daresay that if Christ had told Peter not to deny him, Peter would not have become the founder of our Church.”

Javert cast his eyes down, fixing his gaze onto the pot of water. His hands started to peel the potatoes again.

He knew, of course, what Valjean was getting at. The man had made it so obvious that he might as well be advertising his point with neon billboards. He swallowed back the words, _I didn’t think you would be so egoistical to compare yourself to Christ_ , because that would be acknowledgment, and he knew perfectly well that Valjean was simply trying to emulate Christ’s mercy.

Instead, he said, “I don’t remember much about the New Testament. The Books I know best are the Pentateuch.”

“Yes, I thought you might.”

The amusement in his voice had Javert narrowing his eyes immediately. “What do you mean by that?”

“They are the books of laws,” Valjean answered simply.

“Man’s laws are mirrored after God’s,” Javert said. “To not know the source is pure folly.”

“God gave us laws, true,” Valjean nodded. “But he also gave us his Son, who taught us mercy.”

Javert rolled his eyes. He peeled faster. “Yes, yes, and Christ said, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.’ John 8:7.” His lips twisted into a mockery of a smile. “‘The righteous into life eternal.’ Matthew 25:6. I’m bound for Hell, I know.”

Valjean stopped entirely. He frowned. “That’s not what I’m trying to say,” he said, voice tight. “And you know it.”

“I’ve already told you: what does the law know?” Javert shot back. 

“‘If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land,’” Valjean said, still quiet. “Chronicles 7:14. The Lord forgives, Javert. Why would you not do the same to yourself?”

Javert finished peeling the potato. He dropped it into the pot. “If praying is all that saves a man, then there is no need for jails or laws,” he said flatly. He fixed his eyes on the task, ignoring the weight of Valjean’s. “I have judged unfairly. I have killed. In many ways, I have put my own judgment above that of God.”

He laughed, a harsh, mirthless sound. “I have lost the right to pray long ago.”

Valjean shook his head. ‘There’s no such thing as the right to pray. Only the desire to.”

“If we’re arguing about semantics,” Javert said, keeping his voice light. “Then I have lost the right for God to listen long ago.”

He could see that Valjean was making to protest again, but the potato he was peeling was the last one. He looked at it for a moment before he dumped it into the water along with the peeler and walked out of the kitchens.

Three minutes or so later, he heard a different set of footsteps approach him from where he was standing right outside the entrance (three hundred metres from Valjean, maximum.)

She had a cigarette hanging between her teeth, hands shoved into her pockets. Javert watched as she stopped next to him, lighting it up and taking a long drag. When she noticed his staring, her lips quirked up, and she offered him the pack.

“Want one?”

He should ask Valjean if he could. That was, after all, part of the rules. But he was sick of Valjean, sick of permission, so he took one and lit up with the lighter she offered, blowing a long trail of smoke up to the skies.

“Couldn’t help but overhear the conversation you were having with Fauchelevent,” she said after a few moments of silence. “Pretty intense.”

Javert gave her a weary glance. “Are you going to offer your viewpoint too?”

She laughed. There was a hoarseness to it, a rasp that Javert immediately recognised as scars on the vocal chords from either too much screaming or a more direct injury.

“Nah,” she said, turning away to exhale smoke. “I don’t know much about God, much less be able to quote verses like the two of you.” She paused, looking down to her feet for a moment before she shrugged.

“See, I only learned how to read a couple of years back. Fauchelevent taught me.”

Javert closed his eyes. Valjean’s mercy was heavier and more suffocating than the collar on his neck.

“I’m not surprised,” he said.

“He’s a nice guy,” she said, and he could hear the shrug in her words. “Sincere about it too, instead of trying to look good or even to get something out of it.” A pause. “But that’s not what I came out here for.”

“You came here for something?”

“Yeah. Perspective, I guess,” she said. He opened his eyes, turning to look at her, and she gave him a crooked smile.

“See, I know a little ‘bout Hell. Lived in it for a decade or so, really.” She paused, exhaling. “And I’d say that you’re already in it. Because of this.”

She tapped her own throat.

“You have so little faith in Fauchelevent?” he asked, somewhat proud of himself that he didn’t trip over the name.

“Nah,” she laughed again. “If there’s any guy I can trust with a slave contract, it’s him. But a collar’s still a collar no matter who is holding the chain. Sooner or later, it’s going to chafe.”

Javert took a long drag. He dropped his head back and stared at the skies. It was mid-afternoon, and the skies were disgustingly bright. 

He smiled. “It already does.”

She looked at him for a long moment before tossing her cigarette to the ground, kicking it over to the nearby drain. “Yeah. I can see that.”

There was understanding in her eyes. Javert looked away, flicking his own cigarette into the drain even though it was only half-finished and he knew he wasn’t likely to get another any time soon.

He went back inside.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert continues to follow his Master through the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Book I: Chapter Four: Desiring Abyss**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Disturbing depiction of D/s (hence change in ratings); depiction of internalised homophobia twisted up with religious faith; another OC (who is also a plot device); philosophical discussion about the nature of revolution. The latter is there even though it’s not anything as _bad_ as the others, but it might be offensive, especially if you are very fond of the barricade boys. Please remember that characters’ opinions are not mine.

“I’m not leaving the shelter early because of you,” Valjean said without turning around.

They were on the streets again, Valjean three steps ahead of Javert with his fingers wrapped around the end of the chain. The metal links swung between them.

Javert scowled. How the hell did he know that was exactly what he had been thinking?

“Do enlighten me,” he drawled.

Valjean turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “It’s Wednesday. I have something else to do this afternoon.”

Wednesday. Hah. So that was the day it was then. Javert made a mental note of it: Valjean had a regular weekly schedule then.

He was about to ask what Valjean was going to do now, but he looked at the man steadily walking in front of him and said, instead, “I’ll have to wait and see what that ‘something else’ is, don’t I?”

Valjean stopped. He turned to Javert, smiling once more before he shook his head. “Not anymore,” he said. “We’re here.”

They were standing in front of a building that had seen better days: paint peeling off the walls, windows with glass either taped together or with frames held together with wooden boards, ivy crawling up every corner, and mismatched tiles on the roof. Javert stared at it.

“So why haven’t you flung money at this place yet?”

“Oh, he tried, but I haven’t allowed him to do it,” a voice said.

Javert had heard the footsteps, of course – even here, on streets that were slowly getting busier as the rush hour approached, they were loud on the cobblestones. Turning, he faced the man who spoke.

White male, mid-twenties, messy stubble on his jaw and chin. Dressed in a pair of ragged jeans and a leather jacket that looked as if it had gone through several wars. Hands shoved into pockets that bulged with what looked like keys.

There was a red cap yanked over his dirty-blond hair, and a red scarf draped over his shoulders. Both were newer than the rest of his outfit; several months old, at most. 

He smiled at Javert, a crooked quirk of the lips. He held up his hands. “I was never at the barricades, Inspector,” he said, sounding a little amused. He tugged on the hat, lowering it slightly over his brown eyes. “This is a tribute.”

“A dangerous one,” Javert pointed out. He wasn’t surprised that the man recognised him, though the face didn’t ring any bells.

“Anything worth doing is dangerous in one way or another,” he said. Turning to Valjean, his lips widened. “Monsieur, aren’t you going to introduce us? It’s unfair to leave the Inspector here at a disadvantage.”

Valjean chuckled, shaking his head. “Javert, this is Mathieu Frey. He’s the schoolmaster here.”

“This is a _school_ ,” Javert said, incredulous. The building looked like it was only one hobbling step away from being condemned; a far cry from the polished and clean buildings for children or the towering and gleaming universities.

“Not a usual one,” Frey shrugged. “There are no school fees, no attendance-taking, and we don’t teach students of the usual sort.”

“Who do you teach then?” Javert asked, curious despite himself. Out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed that Valjean was smiling at him again. He stifled the urge to roll his eyes, or, worse still, to reach over and shake the man until he had some answer.

“The kind of people you would probably arrest,” Frey said, a little wry. “Prostitutes, beggars, the homeless. Anyone who wants to come, really.”

“I’m not sure if you noticed,” Javert said, hooking his finger beneath his collar. “But I’m can’t exactly arrest anyone anymore.”

Frey laughed. “I’m sure Monsieur would let you if you want to,” he said. He turned towards Valjean, one eyebrow raised. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Well,” Valjean said, actually taking the damned question seriously. “That’s entirely dependent on whether or not Javert wants to again.”

Javert bit back a sigh. Of all the possible answers he thought Valjean would give, this would be on the bottom of the list. But, hell, he shouldn’t even be surprised, because it was _just_ like him.

“Making arrests requires legal authority,” he pointed out. “I don’t have it anymore.” He decided not to add that he didn’t even have any legal _rights_ , but he wasn’t going to fall that far for the bait.

Frey looked at him for a long time, dark eyes searching. Javert met them without flinching and decided to not tell him that he wouldn’t want to arrest those damned people the man obviously cared so much for anyway. 

“Good to hear it,” Frey nodded eventually. He turned halfway from them, eyes still fixed on Javert. “I don’t know what you can help with, Inspector, but come in anyway. Maybe you can sit in Monsieur’s class.”

Valjean started walking, following the man into the building. “I teach French, generally,” he told Javert. “Both the basics of reading and writing and literature.”

“Literature,” Javert repeated.

“Yes,” Valjean said, lips twitching slightly, clearly having caught the disbelief in Javert’s tone. “It’s an incredibly useful skill to be able to discern implications, or even whether or not someone is telling the whole truth.”

“What does fiction have to do with either?”

“Fiction is the only medium in which you’re entirely dependent on what is being shown to you about what is going on, and at the same time you know that it might not be the whole truth because the author has a motive for telling you what he is,” Valjean said. “It’s useful.”

Every single conversation, every single _damned_ conversation, Javert found himself learning more and more about Valjean. He already had too many words to describe this man when most of the world was granted only one, and here he was, accumulating more.

Javert looked around. There were words still stuck in his throat, but they were ones he couldn’t say here, in public, while Frey was still a distance away, his eyes sharp upon them. 

“You should probably get ready for your classes,” he said instead.

“Well, lesson starts in fifteen minutes, so I should,” Valjean nodded. He leaned in terribly close, so much that his breath was half-ghosting over Javert’s neck. The itch returned again, fire crawling beneath his skin, and Javert bit the inside of his cheek to not pull away. 

“You don’t have to stay and watch if you don’t want to. Mathieu is teaching Math today, and there are other teachers around here as well. Wander around if you like.”

“You’d trust me out of your sight?” Javert raised an eyebrow.

Valjean cocked his head, stepping backwards. “Yes,” he said. “But I need you to promise to not go beyond the building.”

He didn’t have to even look at the collar for Javert to know exactly what he was implying. And Javert found himself laughing again, hoarse and mirthless.

“You should order me not to,” he pointed out. “It holds more weight than a promise.” 

“No,” Valjean said. “If I order you, it’ll mean nothing.”

“A promise still won’t mean anything.”

Valjean smiled, “I’ve never known you to lie.”

Javert looked at him for a moment, suddenly weary beyond words. Valjean should have been a trapper instead of a thief. Or a lawyer, even; he would probably be more competent than Pontmercy.

He turned his head towards the door. It would only be a short run, he knew, but he heard himself say:

“I promise.”

That damned smile widened. 

***

Javert let his feet take him wherever they would throughout the school. He noted down the cracks in the wall and the ceilings, the rust on the tables and chairs that looked like they would fall apart the moment too much weight was placed upon them, and books – all of different editions – that looked like they were falling apart.

He found Frey in one of the classrooms, perched on the teacher’s desk and twirling a marker pen between his fingers. The cap was pulled low over his eyes, but the shadows didn’t soften at all the sharp glance the man turned towards Javert the moment he saw him.

“It’s not pride, you know, the way the school looks,” Frey said. “It’s a political statement.”

Leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms, Javert raised an eyebrow. 

After a moment, Frey sighed, jumping off the table. “Everything is functional here,” he said, waving a hand. “The walls stand. The ceilings don’t leak. The tables and chairs might creak but they hold weight. But just because things can function doesn’t mean that they should stay in such a state.”

He stopped for a moment, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling. Javert waited.

“I’m one of those bastards lucky enough to receive an education in history, you know,” he said eventually, voice low and quiet. “Things used to be so much _better_ before the civil wars that turned leaders into monsters. There used to be enough food for everyone and free education. Women believed to be as capable as men. Subsidised healthcare. People used to be able to go to the doctor when they were sick without having to pay through the nose for it.” 

Javert had never been much of a student of history. Laws had changed throughout time, of course, but he believed – or had believed – that the nature of men had never changed. Some would always be wild animals hiding beneath stolen human skins. 

The feel of a cold knife at his wrist, cutting his bonds, skittered across his mind. Javert pushed it away.

Frey wasn’t finished. He was looking at Javert now, eyes narrowed. “Our leaders used to care about serving their people instead of holding onto their power by grinding those they’re supposed to protect beneath their shoes.”

“That’s only appropriate,” Javert said, an ironic twist to his lips. “Given that the poor, the slaves, and the convicts have no shoes to speak of.”

There was a flash of anger in Frey’s eyes. “Do you not care at all?”

“I know what you’re trying to say,” he spread his hands out in an extravagant gesture that deliberately drew attentions to his shoulders. “But what makes you think that a few pretty words are enough to change my mind when this,” he tapped his collar, “didn’t?”

“Didn’t it?” Frey asked.

Javert raised an eyebrow.

“I followed your case pretty closely,” Frey said. “It was hard not to, when you’re pretty much the embodiment of the law itself amongst the people I know.” His lips twisted, and his eyes shone with something that Javert could almost take to be admiration.

Months ago, he would have taken that to be proof that he, and the law, was right.

“Why did you shoot that man, Inspector?”

“I’m not that anymore,” Javert said, deliberately mild. He took a step inside the classroom. “Why weren’t you at the barricades?”

He was close enough to the age of most of the students, and clearly carried revolutionary ideals. 

Frey tossed his head back and laughed. It was bitter. “Because I didn’t think it would’ve solved anything,” he said. “What use is there of shooting at the police or the National Guard? It’s sacrificing your queen in order to take down a pawn.”

“So this is your revolution?” Javert asked, jerking his head towards the school. “Hiding away here in this broken down building, telling people that it’s a political statement?”

“No,” Frey shook his head. “It’s taking a direct hand in making people’s lives better. They never had a school. So we’ll give them a school. They’ve never learned to read. So Monsieur will teach them to read. They’ve never learned to think for themselves. So Monsieur teaches them to tell the liars from the honest. They’ve never known what it means to be free. So I try to teach them about history.”

He took a deep breath, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling. “But there’s only so much we can do. We’re stitching the edges of a gushing wound.” His eyes turned to Javert again, and his fingers tapped hard on the desk. 

“Political statement. Every man charts his own path to revolution.”

“It still sounds like pretty words to me,” Javert said, but his own sounded hollow in his ears.

Valjean phrased it as mercy, Frey as revolution, but they were the same thing in the end: to reach out to give a helping hand to those who had fallen into the gutter. Javert had spent his entire life believing that those who had fallen had chosen to do so themselves, and so they deserved nothing more than a cage to keep them there because the gutter corrupted and rotted, turning men into beasts.

Javert had spent his entire life running away from it. Even as he had reached down to the gutter to place the bars to stop those who had fallen from getting to their feet, he had worn a coat and gloves woven from self-righteousness to stop the stench from touching his skin. 

He was learning that there were those who could emerge pristine from the filth. And perhaps there were those who slipped through no fault of their own, wanting nothing more than to claw themselves back out only to be constantly thwarted by men like him.

An alleyway. Blood on the ground. Bruises on skin that should be filthy with muck but was instead immaculate; filth caking onto skin that should be pristine. Tears and scrabbling hands on bricks. On cobblestones. The stench of the polluted Seine. The salt scent of the nearby sea.

“Maybe so,” Frey said mildly. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I didn’t answer the prosecution,” Javert replied, voice steady. “Why do you think I would tell you?”

“One can’t help but try,” Frey said, the twist of his lips giving double meaning to his words. He checked his watch. 

“My students are coming in soon. Are you staying?”

A convict saved a prostitute and her child. A police officer killed an unarmed civilian in cold blood. A woman with all rights to fear or even hate him giving him sympathy. And now, a rebel who offered him not gunmetal to the head but words to help him understand.

He knew now: corruption was etched in the rust of the bars. His hands were stained with blood, destruction seeping through cloth to coat skin with the darkness of sin.

At the barricades, Valjean had cut away the pillars holding up his world as easily as he had sliced through the ropes. Now, by Valjean’s grace, the foundation was chipped away, piece by piece. 

Valjean.

“I’ll be in the building.”

Frey nodded. “Just try to keep out of sight and not scare the students,” he said briskly, already turning away.

Once, Javert would have been immediately affronted at being dismissed so easily. He would have growled, perhaps, or even snarled. But once, he would not even be here, having a conversation with this man such that he could be dismissed.

So he simply walked out of the door instead.

***

“We would be doing even the film a great injustice if we dismiss Frollo as nothing but a villain,” Valjean was saying as Javert slipped into the classroom through the back door. “Not to mention the text itself.”

There was a flat screen pulled down from the ceiling, and a projector sitting on a cart in front of it. Outdated equipment when schools, as far as Javert heard, used holographic spheres nowadays. But this wasn’t a normal school, but these weren’t the average student either.

He had watched them stream in from the second-floor after he left Frey. There were less than twenty of them, all adults, most in their late twenties or thirties, with a mixture of races: mostly white, with a few blacks and Asians, and a couple with dusky skin that Javert recognised immediately from the scant memories he had of his childhood

“Oh come on,” one of them complained, waving towards the screen. “He’s basically saying that he’s going to either rape her or burn her at the stake. How does that make him not a villain?”

Javert looked more closely. A man in a ridiculously purple blob of a hat was standing there, facing a fireplace and making extravagant gestures. The image was clearly hand-drawn, and two-dimensional.

The film had to be over a hundred years old. Javert wondered how Valjean got his hands on it, much less gotten equipment to be able to play it.

Valjean tapped his fingers on his table, clearly contemplative. “Anyone has an answer to that?”

“He’s not a villain because he’s a monster?” a woman guessed. Beneath her trenchcoat, she was wearing leather boots with a narrow stiletto heels.

The class laughed. Valjean shook his head.

“No one?” he lifted his eyes, and looked straight to where Javert was standing with his back against the wall. “Javert? Do you have suggestions?”

At the sound of his name, every single student jerked, immediately turning. Some of them had half-risen to their seats, their body tensing into a flight-or-fight motion. Javert deliberately tipped his head up to show the collar before he shrugged.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“ _Notre-Dame de Paris_ ,” Valjean said. Which was utterly incomprehensible.

“The cathedral?”

“The novel.”

“Why would someone name a novel after a building?”

“Because the main character of the novel is the building.”

Javert stared. “What.”

Despite his attention being mostly on Valjean and how his lips were twitching, Javert noticed that he wasn’t the only one staring. The difference was that the students were all staring at _him_ instead of Valjean.

“It’s one of the classics of French literature,” Valjean said. He held up a book that looked thick enough to brain someone in the head with. “One of the most famous and important works in the world.”

“Fauchelevent,” Javert said slowly, as if to a child. “I sincerely doubt that knowing the characteristics of an obviously deranged man with too much fondness for purple who is talking to the fire, from a book written by another obviously deranged man since he named it after a building, would have been useful to me in any way.”

Valjean made a sound like a cat being strangled.

“So why don’t you stop asking me questions you either know the answers to, or know I don’t have the answers to, and keep going on with your _job_.”

The strangled-cat noise came again. Valjean carefully put the book down. He bowed his head against the desk. His shoulders were shaking.

It took Javert a while to realise that Valjean was _wheezing_. Like he was laughing so hard that he didn’t even have the breath to laugh aloud.

“Please don’t have a heart attack,” he added belatedly.

Unfortunately, that just seemed to make it worse, because Valjean was getting red in the face now. Javert just stared at him for another moment more before he rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

Apparently that was some kind of cue, because the entire room burst into laughter. Not Valjean’s wheezing, but loud, raucous cackling mixed with gasps of “Oh my God” and sprinkled liberally with “hell” and “fucking” and “bloody” at some points.

He wished he had a higher collar on his shirt, or even his usual uniform coat. Because he knew that his mouth was starting to twitch upwards. It didn’t make sense, because he knew he was being laughed at, but, somehow, there was a sort of warmth starting within him. It felt oddly like the satisfaction of a job well done. 

Valjean seemed to get control over himself quickly enough. He was still shaking a little, but Javert could see how his breathing was evening back out. Running a hand over his scalp, he looked up, and Javert’s breath caught in his throat.

It was those eyes. They were usually dark and Javert had never bothered to figure out the colour, but now he could see, even from the distance, that they were the colour of bark. But brighter, shining now with both tears and mirth

Javert had a policeman’s habits of observation. That was all there was to it.

He watched as Valjean wiped at his eyes, still huffing breathlessly. He couldn’t look away as Valjean smiled at him, wide and utterly sincere, taking years off of his face.

The room was starting to fall back to silence. Valjean smiled at them for a moment before he turned to Javert.

“Alright, you’ve made your point,” he said, still smiling. “I won’t ask again.”

Javert nodded. He couldn’t trust himself to speak; not with the thunder in his ears, or the lump in his throat.

Hell. He was in hell. He should- he needed to get out of here.

But his feet were carrying him forward. But his hand was grabbing a chair, carrying it to the back. But his legs were folding, sitting down.

And his eyes could not leave Valjean.

***

The rest of the lesson was rather peaceful. Javert still didn’t have the faintest idea what the book was about, or even how a building could be a main character, but he wasn’t making much of an effort to find out.

At the end, the students had simply looked at him once before walking out. Javert was almost tempted to follow some of them – it was dark out now, and he knew where some of them would be going – but he didn’t.

He had expected avoidance and glares, even a punch in the face or an attempted knife between the ribs. Instead, there were a couple of them who looked at him, then at Valjean, before giving him a deep nod that seemed almost like thanks.

A group of men and women who should hate him, and yet they gave him more respect than he would once have given any of them. Part of him wondered if the book and the discussion about it had anything to do with it, but he genuinely doubted that.

When they returned to the house, he watched as Valjean took off his shoes and placed them neatly in the shelf. His own had been nudged to the corner the moment he stepped in.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “You’re not being very subtle about it.”

Valjean looked at him for a moment before he chuckled, not even trying to deny it.

Javert glanced at him. “For a man who was educated in prison, and only during adulthood, you actually have a brain.”

Leaning in slightly, Valjean’s lips twitched a little more. “I can say the same about you,” he said, and his tone was almost light enough to be teasing. Couldn’t be.

“How do you know that?” 

“I guessed,” Valjean said, looking slightly embarrassed. “Or, well, you told me once that you were born in a jail, so I… assumed.”

“You actually heard that.” Javert wouldn’t blame him if he hadn’t: he’d had a gun in Valjean’s face at the time, and they were yelling overeach other.

Valjean nodded. “I didn’t… I wasn’t thinking much about it at the time, but I had more time to think later on.” He looked at Javert for a moment before he smiled, a little wry. “About you and how you think, so I would know what to do if we ended up running into each other again.”

Javert looked at him. A part of him was oddly gratified that he wasn’t the only one: sometimes, Valjean had crossed his mind; sometimes, he had found himself spending days thinking about the man. He had escaped from him, after all, and Javert had never taken failures well. There had been times in which he had _wanted_ to meet Valjean again, if only to rectify his mistake.

(Only that. _Only that_.)

“I wasn’t educated as an adult,” he found himself saying. “I learned as a kid, at around twelve or so.” When a chaplain took pity on the kid assigned to menial errands because he wasn’t much good for anything else, with the fine art of message-carrying long lost, as an attempt to keep him from following down the path of crime like almost everyone else he was surrounded by.

“You know,” Valjean said thoughtfully, “I wasn’t much of an adult when I learned either.”

Eighteen. Valjean had been eighteen when he was first arrested. Younger than the schoolboys killed at the barricades, around the same age as his daughter right now. A bloody _kid_ sentenced to five years in prison, the whole of his early adulthood, who ended up more than twice as old when he finally got out.

The law dictated that he was an adult. 

What did the law know?

Javert jerked his head away, unable to keep meeting Valjean’s eyes. Suddenly, he realised how close they had been standing to each other. Like this, with Valjean’s head tipped up, Javert could look only at his lips or neck.

His mouth ached. His fingers twitched. He squeezed his eyes shut and stepped back.

“I’m going to sleep.”

There were flames still burning beneath his skin when he closed the door of the room Valjean had decreed as being his. The chain slapped against his thigh.

Raising the metal, Javert looked at it. Slowly, he wrapped the links around his neck, holding onto the end. He pulled.

Stars burst behind his eyes. His throat screamed as metal bit at skin, pressed on bruises and burst even more capillaries beneath.

Footsteps. A knock on his door. “Javert?” Valjean’s voice. “I need to take off your chain.”

Javert stopped. He unwound the chain until it fell to his thighs again. Turning, he opened the door. He didn’t meet Valjean’s eyes, merely tipping back his head.

Valjean’s skin didn’t touch his as he unhooked the chain. But the warmth of his fingers lingered, tempting.

“Goodnight,” Valjean said. “Sleep well.”

Like hell.

***  
_  
Cobblestones against his knees. Solid chill that seeps through leather coat and rough cloth to invade through his skin into his nerves, chasing warmth away._

_This time, he has a body. He is on his knees._

_Moonlight from above illuminates the man standing in front of him, turning bronzed skin and white suit into wooden sculpture dressed in marble. Valjean isn’t speaking, simply staring at him. The darkness of his eyes so deep that they almost glow in the light._

_He doesn’t flinch when the hand comes. It strokes him from forehead downwards, curving around nose and jaw, strangely warm before wrapping around his neck. The metal of the collar is colder than stone, and he can’t help but shudder when it presses tight against his throat._

_Valjean smiles with Madeleine’s mouth and slams him against the wall with a convict’s strength._

_His shoulders dig into the dirty alley wall. There is blood there, rust-stench crawling into his nose. Red is smeared all over the bricks, smearing over his uniform coat._

_Javert shudders. “Valjean,” he says helplessly as the man leans even closer, his breath hot on his lips. “24601.”_

_The itch beneath his skin is flaring back to life, a fire that threatens to consume him wholly. He gasps for breath, a body that is long-dead threatening to come back to life, stagnant-sterile blood in his veins trying to move again. Javert stares wild and blank as Valjean chuckles, a sound as heavy and devouring as the darkness around them._

_“You like this, don’t you?” he says, sounding amused. His hand comes forward, brushing over Javert’s mouth. He traces Javert’s lips with a deliberation that makes him shudder all over again, and his tongue has gained a mind of its own, darting outwards to try to lick those fingers._

_“You want this,” Valjean says, and he shoves those fingers into Javert’s mouth. Pressing hard against his cheeks, making them bulge; slamming into his throat, stopping his breath. Javert gags even as his mouth closes automatically, trying to draw breath but only succeeding in sucking on those fingers._

_Calluses and salt. The ever-present smell of the river in Paris has turned into the ocean, and Javert hears the crashing waves and heavy prisoner-grunts. Toulon in his ears, Toulon in his nose, and 24601’s tattoo glimmer like newborn constellations in the moonlight._

_Valjean’s hand on his throat lets go. Then it comes back again, fingers splayed over the entire neck before he slams Javert against the wall hard enough to make white burst behind his eyes. The fingers shove in even harder, a knuckle brushing over the back of his throat, and Javert gags again, his entire body shuddering._

_“Is this why you want me to kill you?” Valjean asks, his voice wrapping around Javert’s body. Teeth scrapes over his ear, his neck, all over his body. “So that you can think to yourself, at the moment of death, that you belong to me?”_

_‘No,’ he tries to say, but his voice will not obey. His throat is too full._

_The fingers withdraw. Valjean smiles at him with all of a mayor’s grace._

_“Valjean,” he hears instead, echoing as if he is trapped in a cave and it comes from outside. “Valjean.”_

_This man has destroyed all of his words with his touch, leaving only his name, all of his names. Javert is left defenceless, nameless, a ‘you’ without an ‘I’, and his body jerks puppet-helpless in Valjean’s grasp._

_Slowly, Valjean drags his fingers back over his mouth. Upwards, further, smearing spit over Javert’s eyelids like it is holy water giving benediction._

_His foot comes down on Javert’s crotch, his shoes mayor-shiny against the filthy leather of Javert’s coat._

_He’s hard hard, Javert realises, cock filled with blood that should be lifeless. And Valjean keeps smiling, thumb sliding down to Javert’s throat to press over his pulse as his foot_ grinds _, slow and steady._

_The moan that escapes him echoes in the alleyway, marking the insides of his ears, marking the insides of his lungs._

_“This is a dream,” Valjean tells him, voice oily black with shadow teeth. “Only a dream, because I won’t ever touch you this way.”_

_He steps back. Then he is on the other side of the alley, his hands shoved into his pockets. Moonlight caresses his skin, turns him once more into a sculpture with stars-bright eyes._

_Javert’s skin screams for contact. His hand reaches, fruitlessly, and meets nothing but air thickened by his own want._

_“You don’t deserve it.”_

__The floorboards were cold on Javert’s knees. Solid chill that seeped through his new pyjamas into his skin. Streetlight poured through the open blinds, turning the room into unreality.

Javert curled and turned, his body an alien creature. Somehow, he managed to sit up, legs still folded underneath him. His groin was still burning, cock aching between his thighs; fire amidst ice and snow.

The door was closed. The house was quiet.

He shuddered hard, closing his eyes. Slowly, like cards collapsing, he folded his body until his head rested on the floorboards. His hands clawed at wood for a long moment before finally obeying, clenching into fists as he drew them to his chest.

“O, God,” he tried, his voice coming as a croak. Unfamiliar to his mouth as this prayer was, he knew it well enough. He must try again. He must try, because there was nothing left for him but this.

“O God, I am heartfully sorry to have offended Thee, and I detest all of my sins because of Thy just punishment, but most of all because I have offended Thee my God, who is good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more, and to avoid the near occasion of sin.”

His fingers rubbed over themselves once more, aching and cold.

“Amen.”

He waited. The heat of his cock was surely hellfire itself. It didn’t stop. 

It didn’t stop.

Of course not. Javert’s shoulders shook. Why would it, when he no longer knew who he was praying to anymore?

There was no repentance for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes:** I’ve avoided doing this so far, but I must clarify: I _know_ that in the Brick, Valjean was twenty-seven when he was first arrested. But Nehal Joshi cannot pull off being in his sixties during Valjean’s death to save his life; not his fault, given that he’s only thirty-seven, and a really young-looking one at that. So in this fic, he’s fifty-six and resembles mid-forties. Still not terribly convincing, but enough that my brain stops shorting out. (Javert is, in this fic, eight years younger than him at forty-eight, and prematurely grey.) The age change is will be a plot point. 
> 
> Also, Javert is white, because Watts is pretty much the whitest white bread possible. That’s all I’m saying right now. Because, well, pretty much everything is a plot point.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert finds the straw that breaks his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Book I: Chapter Five: Filthy Cage**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Depiction of prison violence; discussion of violent rape and murder; discussion of canon-typical parental abuse (that is pretty horrific); depiction of catatonia and panic attack.

Javert spent the rest of the night on his knees on the ground, fingers trying to turn a rosary he no longer deserved, mouthing words he knew would not be heard. When the morning came, his body ached from remaining in the same position for hours, pain flaring from his knees as he held onto the edge of the bed to stand.

The house was entirely silent. Even if he strained, he couldn’t hear any sound of movements. Valjean was likely still asleep; good, because Javert had no idea how he would even look at the man right now.

He slipped out of the room, then out of the house. Standing there at the door, looking out to the garden, he watched as the sun crawled further up the skies. Valjean had a few morning glories right at the edge of the gate; Javert watched as they bloomed, heads turning towards the sun, and wondered just how on Earth Valjean found the time to tend to his garden when he had so much to busy himself with.

Images flashed across his eyes: Valjean, dressed in a casual shirt, kneeling on the grass; sweat dripping down his forehead to bead on his lashes, reflecting the dark shine of those eyes; his strong arms, corded with muscle, streaked with dirt and dead leaves. He had once been a tree pruner in Faverolles, up in the north: how much of that occupation did he remember?

Javert squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his hands hard enough to drive nails into skin and flesh. But the pain was too minute to chase away the images; no, they only made them shift further, the Valjean in his eyes standing up, smearing dirt over his face as he wiped at his forehead, turning to smile at—

He stood up from the steps and walked towards the gates, splaying his fingers above the keypad that kept it locked. He wondered if Valjean had the sense to install a motion sensor on the metal, or if he really was confident enough in his own strength and the safety of his neighbourhood to trust that there would be no one who would try climbing in. Or out.

Valjean’s house surrounded him. Valjean’s collar wrapped around his neck. Valjean’s smile imprinted on the insides of his eyelids. Valjean’s warmth twisted around his nerves, the memory keeping him warm in the chill of the morning despite how much he tried to keep it away. Valjean’s presence chaining him to the house, shackling his legs and his will so he could not even begin to think about climbing over the gate for some kind of escape.

Closing his eyes, Javert dropped his head forward until it rested against the metal. He drew his tongue between his teeth, biting down on it. More pain burst inside him, but even an ocean of it wasn’t enough to wash himself clean.

Damn the man. Wasn’t it enough that he had turned Javert’s mind upside down, but made him want him as well? 

Damn his own weakness. Damn his own mind.

Pulling back, he stared at his own hands. They were empty, the skin smooth: even the half-moon marks from his nails had disappeared.

Uneven footsteps on grass. Javert didn’t turn.

“You’re awake early this morning,” Valjean said. He came up next to Javert, standing a distance away.

“And your powers of observation are as strong as ever.” 

“Did you sleep well?”

“Do you delight in asking completely inane questions?”

Valjean made a contemplative sound. “You’re in a mood,” he said, sounding almost amused. “I’d offer to leave you alone for the day, but I don’t think that’s possible.”

He leaned against the metal gate. It rattled.

_Heavy padlock slams against metal bars, the clanging sharp as bells. Raucous laughter adds to the clamour that bounces off the walls._

_There are some solitary confinement cells in Toulon that do not have heavy iron doors that shut out the world. When Javert had first left the place, more than twenty years ago, they had run out of use – the ability to look out and see other prisoners and even greet them had been considered to be a gentler punishment than the particularly terrible prisoners deserved._

_Dust in the corner of the bench. Fingers reach out and flick it away. He watches as dust motes rise, glinting dully in the sunlight pouring from the windows._

_“Not so high and mighty now, are you, Inspector?” a voice yells. A glob of spit lands near his shoeless feet. “Look at you, lower even than the rest of us!”_

_Slowly, he raises his head. The convict who has decided to visit him today has a familiar face. He’s baring his teeth at Javert, a black hole where his front teeth should be. Blood is still dripping slightly from the holes, making him seem like a badly-illustrated vampire._

_He lifts his own arms, letting the metal cuffs and chain on his wrists glint in the light. Cocking his head, he bares his teeth and jerks his head forward._

_The convict stumbles backwards, eyes wide. After a moment, he seems to gather himself, sticking his face through the bars, leering._

_“The moment you get out of there, Inspector… Who knows? Maybe we’ll find a way to get that stick out of your ass. Replace it with something better. You’ll loosen right up after that.”_

_He flexes his hands slightly, keeping his eyes on the man. “There were five of you,” Javert says, low and quiet. “I’m still,” he sweeps his hand out, “_ here _.”_

_The peculiar logic of convicts dictates that those who go into solitary confinement are those who are the strongest, the most dangerous. Javert has spent so much time in solitary that he might as well be moved permanently to this particular cell. (He does not ask why they do not shut him into the ones with closed doors. He does not need to, and he knows better than to disabuse the guards of their assumptions.)_

_Peeling his lips further from his teeth, he continues, “How are the rest of them? Out of the infirmary yet?”_

_Animals. All of them are animals here. Creatures collared and chained, shepherded into lines with heavy batons held by faceless guards. A pile of rabid beasts thrown together until the sickness spreads, infecting the blood of every single one until they have lost all ways of speaking unless through threats, bared teeth, and flailing, blunted claws._

_Here, amongst the stench of beasts in gutters, behind bars again like he had been in the first few years of his life, Javert finds that the world makes sense again. He has done nothing wrong in arresting these men. He has been foolish for suggesting better conditions, because these men have been beasts and always will be._

_Javert is amongst them. They have tried to touch him, corrupt him. Their filth threatens to coat and choke his skin. But he remains untouched by their baseness, if not irreproachable. (No, not anymore. Not with blood on his hands.)._

_Valjean is an anomaly. Valjean is wrong. Valjean is a liar._

_The convict is laughing, loud and ugly. “You haven’t gotten rid of all of us, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says, grinning. “You’ve just made us angrier.”_

_He rattles the bars, making the lock smack against it again. “Everyone hates you, Inspector. You have no friends here. Not even amongst the guards.”_

_“I’ll be disappointed if they show favouritism,” Javert drawls, crossing his legs. “Am I supposed to be afraid?”_

_Anger flashes over the raggedly-bearded face. “You just wait, Inspector,” he spits out, red-tinged spittle nearly landing on Javert’s food._

_“You just wait. One day, one of us will beat that look off your face. We’ll tear your throat out. We’ll make you kneel. We’ll make you scream and beg for mercy. We’ll all come after you and no one will stop us. No one will come to your rescue.”_

_Nothing Javert doesn’t already know: one day, the guards will not even make the effort of pretending to keep the peace and simply let the other convicts tear him apart. But he will fight to his last breath to stop that from happening._

_His smile at the convict is full of teeth. “You can try.”_

_The man’s face is swimming in front of him, close-cropped hair turning bald, pale eyes turning dark._

_"But my life is already forfeit. There is only one man who has the right to take it, and he’s not here.”_

_He folds his hands, grin widening even further. “The guards are kinder than I would have been. They’ve locked up the beast with the sharpest teeth to keep all of you safe.”_

_The man looks at him for another moment, light eyes burning with hatred and, Javert is gratified to see, no little fear. He turns, walking away. His footsteps quicken the moment he turns the corner._

_Javert folds his hands back on top of his knees. He waits._

_It doesn’t even take ten minutes for the padlock to start clanging against the bars of his cell again._

_Day by day, the flames are being stoked higher and higher as the guards allow the other prisoners to witness him in chains, to taunt him and be taunted in return. One day, the fire will rise high enough to swallow him whole._

_But not yet. Not yet._

_Valjean is not here._

__“Javert? Javert, answer me!”

Hands on his shoulders. Warmth sinking through thin cloth. Javert jerked hard, shoving himself backwards, out of Valjean’s grasp.

Valjean was looking at him with brows furrowed and lips thinned, worry writ all over his face. “Are you alright?” he asked. “You were… you were staring into nothing.”

“I’m fine.”

“Does this happen often?” Before Javert could even reply, he shook his head. “Would you tell me what you were,” he hesitated, “thinking about?”

“Prison.”

“Oh,” Valjean said, shadows immediately passing over his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” he said, lips curling up. “It was a good memory.”

“Of your time as a guard?”

“No. When I was a prisoner.”

When Valjean looked at him, eyes wide with disbelief, Javert’s smile widened, bitter and sharp. 

“The world made sense then. Until I saw you and it fell apart all over again.”

Valjean opened his mouth. Closed it. Shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Prison is simple. Convicts are little better than beasts, rabid dogs thrown together. They form packs to attack those they see to be weaker, or those they have grudges against. They tear into each other, fighting to be the top of the junk heap.” He met Valjean’s gaze, hands slowly curling into fists by his side. 

“There, in prison, the world tilted back into its rightful axis. Trash is trash. Guards are guards. And the law is righteous in shutting the beasts in cages so their teeth would not hurt the innocents.”

“But you were in there too,” Valjean said quietly.

“What makes you think I exempt myself from that description?”

“You would think that,” Valjean’s eyes flashed. “You would think that of yourself, just to justify your views.”

Javert barked a laugh, rough and low. “You were there at the barricades. Did you see a man’s head being nearly blown off his body? The blood and bones and brains splattering all over the ground, the walls?” Valjean’s eyes were widening, he noted, and Javert laughed again.

“I did that to a man. An unarmed man. Without warning, without provocation. Without even a revolution as excuse.” His bared his teeth. “What am I, if not a beast?”

Valjean took a deep breath. He looked as if he wanted to sigh, or rub at his temple. “You made a group of troubled people laugh and forget their woes for a day,” he said. “You made them smile, if only for a while.”

“And that absolves me of my crime.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Valjean shook his head. “But it means you’re more than a beast.”

Unbelievable. “A dog running on balls in a circus makes people laugh, but it will be no more than an animal. A lion tamed to hold its jaw open while a fool puts his head in is still capricious and wild enough to crush a neck if it feels like it.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, turning away from Valjean’s gaze. “You said you remember me telling you that I was born in a cell. All my life I’ve tried my best to rise above the gutter, but all I’ve done is to drag people down to stand upon them, the king of the garbage heap.”

“The more I try to understand how your mind works, the more I find myself confused,” Valjean said, calm and contemplative. “Convicts are beasts, you said. The law is righteous to have jailed them, you said. But how many of these beasts have you put there yourself? How many innocents have you protected from them?” 

Javert turned to him, raising an eyebrow. “Do you mean, how many innocents I have moulded into beasts?”

“You have confused me again.”

“Convicts are beasts,” Javert said, wrapping a hand around one of the bars of the gate, his new cage. “All those incarcerated are nothing but. Even if innocent pups at first, they must pull on the furs of wolves in order to survive. The guards’ batons and guns are in fact needles, stitching fur into their skin. After some time – months, perhaps – those pups have grown a full set of teeth on their own.”

He took a deep breath, lidding his eyes. It was not difficult putting this into words – he had a lot of time to think during the night, all the nights during those months behind bars – but awfully trying to say this to _Valjean_.

“And the world outside, the innocents there, they sit fearful and ignorant. They see only stitched fur, and the stitches are tight. But the law is just, the law is righteous, for the pups have committed offence and must be punished. If the law makes exceptions for circumstances, then what use would it be?”

“Perhaps the punishments are too harsh,” Valjean said carefully. “If we cannot change the crimes that are to be punished, then perhaps we can change instead the consequences.”

“Shall we have separate jails, then? One for those who committed crimes out of folly, another out of deliberation.” Javert raised an eyebrow. “How might we trust the word of men?”

That night of the barricades, with the sewer stench still lingering in his nose and the foundations of his world cracked beneath his feet, he wrote an email. A series of suggestions: chairs and shoes for convicts; lessons in God’s mercy by trustworthy priests to policemen and guards. Why not, when they had repealed the law about branding convicts a few years ago?

But none of that had been listened to, he knew, and he did not blame anyone for that.

Why would the ramblings of a madman, or the growls of a beast, be heeded in the end?

Running a hand over his scalp, then his beard, Valjean sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, low and quiet. “I have never been a politician or a philosopher, and I never wished to be one. I am just a man trying to help my fellow man.”

“No worse.”

He nodded, “No worse. No better. A man just like any other, trying to make sense of the world he lives in and to do what he can. And if I have realised anything in my efforts, Javert, it is this: there is little one can do to change the world as a whole. Each man can only do what he can, with the gifts and position that God has given him, to follow his faith and the calling of his heart.”

Turning, he looked back towards the house, eyes fixed on a certain point as if seeing something through the walls. “In Montreuil-sur-Mer I believed that I was helping the town. I believed I was saving it, though I never allowed myself to use that precise word. And yet, after I left, the people still survived. When I was mayor, I looked at the town as a whole and the people were faceless to me. Fantine fell into ruin because of my neglect.”

The mention of that woman made Javert flinch, and he pushed both hands into his pockets again to hide the compulsive rubbing of his fingertips.

But Valjean didn’t seem to have noticed. “Despite her failing health, I felt joy whenever she smiled at me. When I prayed, I no longer sought for my own salvation, but for hers, and my heart was at ease.”

He let out a breath almost heavy enough to be a sigh. “We cannot change the injustices of the world. Yet is it still not worthwhile to reach out towards one soul, or two, and give them mercy when they need it? Does that not make one a man instead of a beast, a good man?”

“Perhaps that is enough for you, for all you did was to steal a loaf of bread to feed a child,” Javert said. The words tasted bitter on his tongue. “But I have caused too much ruin to ever be able to repent for it all.”

Valjean shook his head immediately. He reached out, his hand almost brushing Javert’s cheek before it landed on his shoulders.

“I’ve never known you to give up,” he said firmly. “And Javert… it is not the matter of debt, or of numbers. To change just one person’s life, to have tried your best to do so with no other intention… surely that is enough in God’s eyes.”

Javert stepped back, pulling away from the grip of that hand, that anchoring force that threatened to tie him to Valjean even more than collar, chain and contract. His eyes closed- a mistake, for he saw her again: on her knees, desperation clear, hair shorn unevenly with teeth missing, the dark skin of her cheeks glimmering with tears.

There was no blood on her then. Only later, in the room he entered only after she was dead. Blood on the pillow, blood on the sheets. He drowned in it.

_Oh God, is there no mercy?_

“It’s not enough for what I’ve done,” he said, exhale shuddering out of him. “No matter what I do, it won’t be enough. Not even for one of my sins.”

“Then what will you do?” Valjean’s quiet voice was more damning than a shout. “I will not let you die. So will you simply stay here and _wallow_?”

“No,” Javert said. “I haven’t given up on my first option.”

He heard Valjean exhale, harsh and loud. “You said you have too much pride,” the man said, words sharp and short, bitten out. “You said you sinned by taking your own judgment above that of the Lord. You recognised it, Javert, and yet you still continue to sin.”

His eyes snapped open.

Valjean’s gaze was dark and narrowed, and he gripped Javert by the shoulders again, pulling him down with his inhuman strength so Javert had no choice but to meet his eyes.

“You wish for repentance. Suicide will not give it to you; it is only another sin in God’s eyes.” Javert knew that, he did, but hearing it said aloud had him jerking hard, trying to escape.

But Valjean refused to let go.

“Come with me,” he urged. “The shelter today, the school tomorrow. Look upon the faces of those whom you think you wronged. They are not faceless. They are each men and women, in need of aid. Give it to them however you can. If you refuse to listen to _me,_ if you refuse to let me be your judge,then let _them_ be.”

Javert’s breath hitched. He swallowed. “Is that an order?”

“No,” Valjean said, his hands squeezing tight enough on Javert’s shoulders to bruise. “It is a _choice_. One you always had, but refused to see.”

Once, he had a choice: to stay in the gutter, or to drag others into it and weld the bars to keep them there. He chose the latter, and thought he kept his feet and hands cleaned and faultless.

This was not a way out. There was no way out for one like him. But perhaps he could offer his body to be one to be stepped upon. He was mired in enough muck already, so why not even more?

“Damn you,” he breathed. “Damn you.”

Valjean stepped back, hands gentling. Slowly, he smiled. Thunder roared in Javert’s ears.

No, he would never get out of the gutter.

***

Clarisse had taken one look at him, then at Valjean, before setting them both to the counter during the dinner hour. “If you want to meet people, that’s the best job for it,” she said, and practically shoved them out of the kitchens where the food was being prepared.

So Javert found himself standing behind long tables handing out slightly stale, days-old bread that was still good enough to eat but not good enough to sell. Most of those who streamed in and joined the queue simply took the bread, murmured a ‘thank you’, and moved on without even looking at his face. The few who actually did seemed fixated on his collar.

When the bread had run out – ridiculously quickly, not even halfway through dinnertime – Clarisse told him to “busy yourself somewhere else.” So he found himself outside the building again, sitting on one of the edges of the compound.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting from this. Valjean had told him that in helping, he would be able to find his salvation. But what was there to be found in a series of dull eyes set in gaunt, blank faces that seemed to have lost all hope? What was he supposed to understand here except that the law was wrong to persecute these men and women, something he had already learned?

“We’re not in the habit of looking at faces,” a woman’s voice reached him as footsteps approached. She dropped down on the stone, leaning backwards and resting her hands on her stretched-out legs. “There are only two types of people in our world: the kind who will immediately kick us further down the gutter, and the kind who will do it if they’ve had long enough to think about it.”

Her hands were unfamiliar: dark streaks of oil staining skin, bruises and tiny cuts all over her fingers. But that face he knew all too well; a face he found impossible to forget.

It was the same face that had haunted him for months, always framed by the darkness of an alleyway.

She was smiling at him. Hesitant, teeth sunk into her lower lip, a nervous twitch developing on her cheek. A far cry from the last time he had seen her: wide-eyed, tear-stained face, a litany of silent _no’s_ that went unheard in the cavernous courtroom.

And he realised she was dressed better as well: gone was the short skirt, garters and stockings, replaced by a plain cotton dress that reached her ankles, flat shoes, and a cardigan covering her arms to the wrists. All without patches, looking almost new.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He swallowed, and tried again.

“You look better,” he said, feeling incredibly awkward. “Mademoiselle.”

Her smile widened slightly and she immediately ducked her head, letting out a huff of breath like she had forgotten how to laugh.

“I think you’ve pretty much earned the right to call me by my name, Inspector,” she said, tugging at the ends of her auburn hair.

“Not anymore,” he said, and instead of the flat automatic denial, there was something wry and rueful in his own voice that nearly took him by surprise. He swallowed.

“Mademoiselle Azelma, then,” he said. Slowly, not even sure what he was doing, he stuck out a hand. “I’m Javert.”

They had never introduced themselves to each other despite the alleyway that connected them. Javert only knew her name when it was declared in the courtroom; in the Palais’s interrogation room, they had other things to talk about.

She lifted her head, staring at his hand for a moment before lifting her eyes up to his neck, then his face. “Azelma Thénardier,” she said, fingers closing around his for a moment. “Hi.”

Her lips twitched for a moment and she huffed a breath again. Javert let his hand drop by to his side when she let go, his mind scrabbling for some kind of words to say. He didn’t even know how to begin.

“Clarisse told me that you were here,” she said quietly. “So I had to come. But now that I’m here, I… don’t even know what to say.”

“I,” Javert said, then cleared his throat. “I never asked. Why were you…” He couldn’t continue, shrugging helplessly.

She seemed to understand, however, before she sighed. “My father,” she said. “He told me to… told me to go with that man when he took an interest in me. Said that it’ll make some money, and he’ll even let me use it to find my little brothers. And I went because…” she shrugged, tugged at her hair again. “My father had always been good to me, really, and we needed the money.”

Thénardier. Javert stared at his hands, watching distantly as they curled into tight fists. There were men behind bars, having wolves’ skins forcibly stitched on. And yet, on the streets, there were creatures born as beasts, still walking free.

And he was wrong again. She wasn’t a prostitute, not at all. Just a girl, caught up in the net of a beast of a father.

He let out the breath.

“After that, he… he told me that too many people know my face now for me to be useful,” Azelma continued. “He and my mother… they always said that I was pretty enough to be the mistress of some rich guy, but after the trial…” She shrugged, a helpless-looking motion. “I left before he could finish throwing me out. I found my brothers on my own, and they’re living with me now.”

“So you have a place to live, then?” Javert asked carefully.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “A place, a job… I even know how to read and write now.” She paused, turning to look at him with lowered eyes. “You probably don’t even want to know this, but I had to… I had to tell you, because I have all of these because you saved me.”

Javert froze, breathing stopped in his throat. He opened his mouth, closed it.

“I didn’t,” he heard himself say eventually. “I didn’t save you.” 

He was a murderer. Murderers couldn’t save anyone.

Azelma stared at him. Then she moved so fast that even he with his police-trained instincts couldn’t see it, lunging across the short distance between them to grab his hands and press them to her forehead. Her shoulders started to tremble. She made tiny gasps.

“He would have killed me. He would have killed me, Inspector,” she said, her voice shaking hard. Water dripped onto his skin. “He told me that. He told me that I would make for a pretty corpse. I could see it in his eyes. His eyes…”

Javert had never been good with victims of crimes. His specialty was in making the arrests, leaving the victims to others – fathers of children, brothers of younger siblings, people who actually knew how to deal with moments like these. Most of his interactions with them was to take testimonies after they had calmed.

And most of the victims he knew were angry. Not scared.

 _I was crossing from the park, then this prostitute attacked me._ A scratch on his cheek. Righteous anger in his voice. Bruises on her thighs, her arms. Pleading desperation in hers. She never did try to deny what she did. Never tried to explain the circumstances, to make excuses. Did she know that he would see anything she said as excuses?

His head spun. Past and present melded into an ocean of images, suffocating and drowning. He couldn’t breathe. 

He killed a man. The law called him a murderer. He killed a man. A girl called him saviour. It was the same act. 

It was _the_ _same act_.

“Inspector?”

 _You’re scaring her,_ a voice told him in his mind, sounding distressingly like Valjean.

“I didn’t- I didn’t,” he shook his head, over and over. He wasn’t trying to save her when he pressed the trigger. There was not a single thought in his head about that, he knew for sure; he had revisited the scene enough times in his head.

Javert was… all he was trying… he was just trying to make him _stop_.

Her hands were no longer on his. She was pulling away from him. Her footsteps were light – cloth shoes, he noted dully – and quick as she ran away. As she should, because the reasonable response of an innocent to a murderer was to run away, and she was an innocent. She was blameless.

There was grass between his feet, blades bending. Dust and dirt whirled slightly in the incoming breeze.

“Please,” he heard Azelma’s voice again. Why was she back? How much time had passed? “Please, it’s my fault, but I don’t know what to _do_!”

“It’s not your fault,” a voice replied. A familiar voice. “It’s not your fault, Mademoiselle. And I’m going to need your help.”

Valjean’s limping footsteps approached him. Javert, head bent and eyes fixed on his hands and the blood dripping on them onto the ground. Slowly, the dirt was turning red. A single droplet hit on a blade of green. It slid downwards. The breeze scattered it, splattering everything.

Blood and bone and brains on cobblestone. Blood on pillow. The skies had turned into a shroud woven from it, the sun’s light becoming an ocean. It filled the world. Every breath he took tasted of rust. 

The chain slipped from his shoulders as he fell forward, kneeling on dirt. Silver turned into gunmetal grey. Voices approaching, words impossible to distinguish. Even nearer: heartbeats, like gunshots. 

Hands on his shoulders, pulling. Javert went, mind blank without even the beginnings of thought to resist. Valjean’s arms wrapped around his chest, pulling him into an embrace.

“Mademoiselle, please take his hands. Hold onto them.”

Warmth on his wrists. Small fingers. _You saved me_ , she had said. _You saved me_.

“Breathe,” Valjean said, his voice tight. Fear. There was fear in his voice. “Javert. Please breathe. _Breathe_.”

 _I can’t_ , Javert thought. _I don’t want to_.

Flashing skin, tanned. Flashing eyes, dark. Thinned lips, pale. 

A fist slammed into his ribs.

Javert jerked, falling forward, caught by impossibly strong hands as his lungs were forced to work again, drawing in air. Pants, sharp and shallow and too fast. Stars at the back of his eyelids. Images flashing at the back of his eyelids: paper, corpses. Sharp flashes of orange cloth and silver metal. Cheeks, streaked with tears. 

A corpse stood in front of him, single eye rolling in its socket. Thinned lips on one side, grotesque grin in the other, exposing too many teeth and the hint of a spine. Blood on arms, stitches torn. Dangling threads, dangling fur. Pieces of flesh torn to reveal bone beneath. Numbers carved on them, black shining amidst red. Endless numbers, constantly shifting. Steadied.

24601.

Lips on his temple. “It’s not your fault,” Valjean’s voice said. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not your fault. Javert, please. Talk to me. Come back. _Talk to me_.”

A convict saved his life. But Valjean was a thief who stole in a desperate attempt to save a life. 

_You will starve again_.

Blood and bones and brains.

“I can’t save anyone,” he heard himself say, barely able to understand his own mangled words. “I’m a murderer. I can’t save anyone.”

“You saved me,” Azelma’s hands on his wrists, her voice tripping over itself. “You saved me, Inspector.”

 _Get this rubbish off the street_. 

But he was no better than any of them.

Gutter muck and blood. Surrounding, surrounding, surrounding. A hand above, grabbing onto his collar. Lifted him up before it closed around his neck, squeezing.

“Javert! _Breathe_!”

Dark eyes and lips drawn back into a snarl. Fingers tightened. The spectre of 24601 leaned in. Kissed him. Filled his mouth with blood, heavy and choking.

Another hit to the ribs. Darkness followed it, devouring. 

_Please, God,_ he prayed. _Don’t let me wake up_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never done this, but I've been having this lingering sense of dread and heaviness every time posting day approaches, and I'd rather get rid of that feeling now than to let it fester.
> 
> I'm wondering if the people who are reading this can leave comments, because right now I feel as if I'm talking into nothingness (or, well, crying into the dark where nobody hears). Receiving kudos isn't nearly the same. I want to hear your voices and your thoughts if possible, because- well- I guess that I'd just like to have confirmation that there are people out there who enjoy this fic and they are real people, because kudos never seem real to me.
> 
> I'm not going to hold chapters hostage or anything - we're not back on FFN in 2005 - and the posting schedule will still remain the same. I just hope that more of you will come forward to talk to me because it's getting pretty lonely here shouting into a void. Or, well, a void plus my two editors.
> 
> /slides back into her usual silence


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert finds a direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Book I: Chapter Six: Hunting Wolf**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** ... I actually have nothing to warn for here, except maybe a step forward in recovery of everything the characters went through in the past chapters.
> 
> (Slightly earlier posting today due to not having time at all during the rest of the day. Oy vey, work on Saturdays.)

Javert no longer had the right to be listened to by God. That was the reason why he found his eyes opening.

The sun was beginning to set, streaking reds and oranges across the skies like a great paint-covered hand had moved across the canvas. Javert turned away from it.

And met Valjean’s eyes.

He wasn’t lying on the ground like he expected. Instead, his legs rested upon bedsheets, and Valjean had an arm around his waist with Javert’s back pressed against his broad chest. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw auburn hair.

Valjean shuddered, the motion jarring Javert’s entire body. For reasons Javert couldn’t even begin to guess at, he pressed his lips into his hair.

“Thank God,” Valjean breathed. “Thank God you’re awake.”

His hands were still in Azelma’s grasp. He turned to look at her, taking in the tear tracks on her cheeks. She was sitting on the ground, legs tucked to the side. When her eyes met his, she closed them, dropping her head down and pressing his knuckles to her forehead. 

“I shouldn’t have come to see you,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

Javert attempted to speak, but his throat was dry. He swallowed hard, and tried again.

“Not your fault,” he said finally.

She jerked upwards, her eyes wide. Javert couldn’t meet those eyes, tears-filled as they were, and looked away.

He was in a dorm room, he realised; one filled with six double-decker bunk beds, each placed along the lateral walls of the room. The skies he saw were outside of the large windows that faced the West. In the middle of the room was a long table.

“It’s not your fault,” he said again when Azelma’s silence and eyes grew too heavy around him. He pulled his hands away from her, resting them on his lap. “This was what I brought upon myself.”

Azelma opened her mouth, but it was Valjean’s voice he heard first: “No,” quiet and fierce, arms tightening around his waist. “You must not blame yourself entirely for this. You _cannot_.”

“Can’t I?” Javert said, pulling out of Valjean’s arms. He sat up fully, ignoring the way the world spun when he did, ignoring the chill that settled around him when his skin stopped touching Valjean’s. Turning around, he looked at the two of them – the convict and the prostitute, the good man and the innocent girl.

The laugh that wrestled out of him was cold and bitter on his tongue, and he was helpless to prevent it.

“I’ve shut out anything in the world that could disprove me of my own righteousness.” Like blinkers on a hoarse. “What the hell else is this other than the consequences that I have reaped?”

“I…” Azelma tugged at her hair, bit at her lip. “I don’t know much about righteousness or consequences,” she continued, hesitant. Beside him, Valjean was silent. “But I think… I think you feeling bad about it just means that you’re not really that bad of a person.”

Javert stopped breathing again.

“My parents… my father’s gang… I’ve always known, you know, that they’re not good people,” she said, words seeming to tumble out of her without control again. “They rob, they cheat, and they hurt people who don’t deserve it.” Her eyes darted towards Valjean. “I know all that, but I never cared because, well, what had _those_ people ever done for _me_? My parents and the others… they fed me and clothed me and sometimes they’re even nice to me, you know, and so they must be good and what they’re doing might not be right but it’s… justified, maybe? They’re not, but I didn’t realise until they stopped being good to _me_ and…”

She tugged on her hair hard, frustration turning her eyes dark. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” Her head tipped up. “Just that… Monsieur, I don’t think you’re a bad person. That’s all.”

His head was getting dizzy again. Javert reached out to grab onto something, and found Valjean’s wrist. He gripped tight onto it, feeling a steady pulse beneath his palm that anchored him, stopped him from being tossed back into the dizzying ocean of his own mind.

“Each person has their own way of trying to live and make sense of the corner of the world they have found themselves in,” Valjean said, his voice calm and quiet, his words familiar. His hand squeezed Javert’s wrist.

“To condemn someone for being blind to what he could not have seen is to be cruel, as cruel as it is to blame a sightless man for not knowing the beauty of the sunset,” Valjean continued, sounding contemplative. “All we can do is to help and urge them to find a brighter path once their eyes have been opened.”

More mercy. More of what he did not deserve.

 _You did your duty, nothing more_.

“You… I don’t understand you.” He no longer knew who he was addressing.

Azelma shifted on the floor until her back was to the side of the bed, leaning her back against it and tipping her head to look at the both of them. “I don’t know much about other people, or about you, Monsieur,” she said, gaze resting on Javert. “All I’m doing is to live an honest life right now. I don’t know if that will make up for what I’ve done before, or if there’s anything that _can_ make up for it. But… I’m just trying to take each day one at a time.”

Javert closed his eyes. Once, the world had made sense: there was the righteous and the base; the lawful and the dishonest; the innocent and the guilty; the ones to be protected and the ones to be arrested.

Now those binaries were scattered to the winds, boundaries breaking, everything melding together without categories that could define them.

One day at a time. Could he do that? Was it even possible, when each day seemed to show even more shades in the world? When each day twisted it from flat monochrome into a multi-faceted diamond full of colours that he had no words to describe, much less understand? 

“I need to pick up my brothers from school,” Azelma said, her voice uncertain. Javert opened his eyes just in time to see her stand, hands smoothing down the length of her skirt. “I wish I can stay, but…”

She stopped. Her small hand reached out towards Javert before she made her hands fall back to her sides. “There’s just… just one more thing I want to say to you, Monsieur, and I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear it.

“It’s unfair,” she said. “It’s unfair that you have to wear that… that _thing_.”

Before Javert could reply, she skittered backwards, hands trembling as she smoothed down her skirt again, and left through the door.

Silence settled between them. Valjean’s pulse was still beneath his hand, and Javert couldn’t help but wonder just why the man wasn’t pulling away.

“She’s wrong,” he said eventually, clutching onto one of the few things that still made sense. “It’s entirely fair. I killed a man. I’m a murderer. In prison, I was a rabid beast. I injured the other prisoners. It was lawful.”

Five thousand francs for a life. Five thousand francs, with more for the price of the collar and chain. Five thousand francs for a creature that should have been put down.

There was no way for Javert to repay the debt, for he would never have a sou to his name for the rest of his life. But the law had decreed that he was not to be put down, a decree passed through the misguided wishes of a boy and the mercy of a man. 

“No, you’re wrong,” Valjean said, his hand tightening even more on Javert’s wrist, nail digging between the bones. “No one deserves to be made a slave. _No one_.”

 _A slave of the law_ , Valjean had once said. Nineteen years in prison; nineteen years of hard labour. Thirty-two years as a police officer. Javert’s lips twisted.

“It’s appropriate,” he said, trying to pull his hand back. “It’s almost a mercy, really: finally, the collar and chain can be seen, and not even I can deny it.”

He realised it while he was walking towards the Seine, during those few moments when the world was quiet and the foundations beneath his feet were cracked but not yet shattered: he and Valjean were the same, both captives of the law.

What did the law know? It knew nothing, and yet Javert couldn’t pull his fingers away from it; didn’t even know how to begin to do so. For surely it was still righteous; surely its chains and cages were still of enough use to put away rabid dogs like Javert himself.

Valjean looked at him for another moment before he pulled away, both hands rubbing over his face.

“I’ve run out words,” he sighed. “Even if I haven’t, I see now that they’re not nearly enough.” He turned his head up, meeting Javert’s eyes with his own, the darkness burning bright.

“Tell me what I am to _do_ to make you believe, Javert,” he said. 

Javert looked away, gaze turning towards the door.

“Nothing,” he said, and realised only after the word had disappeared into the air that he meant it. “Nothing, Valjean. There is nothing that you can do.”

He took a deep breath. Surely this was akin to looking into the whirling rapids of the Seine and letting himself tip into it. Yet instead of a never-ending abyss or the fires of Hell, perhaps there was instead some sort of light at the very end. Perhaps in the free-fall he would find structures that could hold the shattered pieces of the world back together.

“I have to do it by myself.” His lips curved up into a bitter smile.

Valjean’s mercy. Azelma’s gratitude. Even Clarisse and Frey, looking him in the eye and speaking to him as if he was still human. None of which he deserved. 

_Mercy is always undeserved. One can only try to earn it afterwards through repentance._

“One day at a time.”

Javert had no idea how he would begin. But he would try.

He would try.

Valjean moved, leaving the bed to stand beside it. He looked at Javert for a moment, hand lifting to Javert’s jaw as if to cup his face before letting it fall back to his side jerkily.

“If there’s anything that I have learned about you after the years,” Valjean said, slight amusement wound through his voice. “You have not failed in what you put your mind to.”

“Well, I did keep failing to kill myself,” Javert said lightly, standing as well. Valjean’s eyes darkened, and he sighed, barely repressing the urge to roll his eyes.

“I’m not going to try anymore,” he said, and that was true too.

***

Three weeks passed. Javert followed Valjean’s schedule and quickly learned its structured rigidity: every day at the shelter; Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the school; every Tuesday morning buying necessities; Tuesdays, Thursdays, and weekend mornings and afternoons spent with the Pontmercy and Cosette; weekend nights out on the streets, giving alms and quiet recommendations to beggars on the streets. 

There was something reassuring in the routine; the knowledge of exactly what he would be doing for the rest of the day the moment he woke, even if he didn’t know what would happen. Familiar to the point that he would compare it to police-work if not for the sheer differences between them.

He had asked some of the homeless at the shelter and the students at the school why none of them had ever hated him, or tried to take out their surely-justified anger at what he had done. They had the right to: he recognised some of them as men and women he had arrested before; and he knew his own reputation.

All of them had looked at him warily before motioning to their own throat, before replying, much in the same vein: _You’ve been fucked over just like the rest of us. Why the hell would we add more to it? It’ll be like kicking a man when he’s already down._

The answer had spurred his efforts even further: in the past, he had never even thought of offering sympathy to them, and yet now they offered it to him freely and without thought. Beggars, whores and convicts: all of them decent men and women fallen into the mire of the gutters, trying desperately to pull themselves out of it.

Even as he tried to learn the methods of dispensing mercy, he found even more of it being given to him. 

Three weeks passed. Valjean persisted in touching him, sometimes brief and sometimes lingering, all times sudden and unexpected. Javert still spent his nights in fever dreams that left him trembling and terrified and aroused.

His fingers ached for his rosary every night, but he had stopped praying. He had not earned his right to be listened to, so he would endure. He would not give in to those dark urges; he would not become base. He would not even think about the possibilities of why Valjean insisted on those touches. 

Nothing would ever come out of it. Javert was base, and Valjean was…

He still had no words for Valjean even now. Every day he found more facets of him until at times looking at the man seemed to be staring into the sun, standing in the eye of the storm, and Javert found himself breathless and dizzied, hands and heart too full of things he still could not understand.

Still, it was peaceful, in its own way.

Friday night: Valjean had returned from the school and was about to head out for a night of giving alms when there was a series of quick, furtive knocks at the door. Javert knew it wasn’t locked, had never been, and he exchanged a glance with Valjean before he picked up his chain from its usual place on top of the shoe rack.

When he opened the door, he found Pontmercy there, hands on his thighs as he panted with his head lowered. His face was red and sweaty, and he looked as if he was only a step away from collapse. He had a piece of paper clutched tight in his hand.

Javert grabbed his arm and practically dragged him into the house.

“Valjean!” he called. “You have a visitor.”

He heard Valjean’s footsteps approaching. Pontmercy still looked dazed, continuously looking over his shoulders. Instincts long-buried kicked in, and Javert walked out of the house before he even knew what he was doing, chain still in his hand as he headed for the gate.

It was gaping wide open. He shut it, waiting for the _beep_ of the automatic lock to sound before he turned away and started to walk around the house, checking behind every tree and bush, listening to sounds of footsteps and breathing.

Not even a rookie would fail to recognise that Pontmercy looked like a hunted, haunted man at the moment. It was entirely unlike him: when Javert saw him yesterday, he had looked like he always did: besotted with Cosette, ridiculously happy, awkward around Javert himself and working on his law studies. Something had happened to make him this terrified, and it had something to do with the paper he carried.

The garden was entirely empty, of course. Javert went back to the gate – he knew the passcode by now, because Valjean had never tried to hide from him when he entered it – and swung his chain over his shoulder. Grabbing hold of the bars at the side, he pushed himself up, climbing until he could see beyond the compound’s walls onto the streets, keeping himself hidden in the shadows of the nearby tree as much as he could. 

Nothing except for passing cars with plates that Javert recognised from the neighbourhood. No suspicious shadows, no whispers. If there had been anyone following Pontmercy, they were already long gone.

He stepped backwards and dropped back onto the grass. 

Valjean would have calmed the boy down by now. Javert returned to the house, dropping the chain back into the original position before heading to the kitchens.

Pontmercy sat on one of the chairs, his face in his hands and a cup of steaming tea by his side. He looked up the moment Javert walked in.

“There’s no one in or around the house,” Javert said. “Calm down.”

The boy swallowed. He shook his head. At the corner of his eye, Javert noticed Valjean motioning him closer, and he went. The paper passed into his hand, more crumpled than it was the last he saw it ten minutes ago.

Javert smoothed it out, and read.

_My dear Baron,_

_I would like to first congratulate you on your upcoming marriage. Your future bride is beautiful. I used to know her once, in her childhood._

_Monsieur, I have a good mind for faces and names, and fortuitous luck to be in certain places at certain times. There was quite a riot a few months ago, and I remember very clearly at having seen your face there. Yours, and the esteemed M. Fauchelevent’s._

_Speaking of that gentleman, Monsieur, did I not mention that I once knew Cosette in her childhood? In fact, she was given to my keeping. Unfortunately, I lost her to a grave villain both you and I know. A man with a brand on his chest._

_Recently, Monsieur, I have fallen to hard times and I now feel the urge to do my civic duty. This is a petition for aid, nothing more. Surely you have some money to spare. Fifty thousand francs, perhaps?_

_One last thing: should you wish to be unkind, Monsieur, let me state once more that your dear love was once, quite legally, given to my keeping. Please also remember that I am a fearful man, and easily threatened. It is no crime to kill a slave, especially in self-defence._  
  
_I eagerly await your answer._  
  
_Yours hopefully,  
A Citizen_

Slowly, Javert folded the paper back, pressing onto the creases. He placed it on the table.

“Thénardier,” he said. A part of him, the policeman who should be long dead and buried, grimly noted that the letter was too eloquent for the man Javert knew him to be. Which meant that he had accomplices: surely the other members of the Patron-Minette. Montparnasse was certainly educated enough and dandyish enough to have written a letter like this.

“Cosette,” Valjean said, his voice tight. “He threatened _Cosette_.”

Startled, Javert turned. The man who stood in front of him was no longer the kind and gentle one that Javert had known for the past weeks. Instead, his eyes flashed with very familiar hatred, and his face was twisted into a fierce scowl.

Then he turned towards Javert, looking first at his neck then up to his face. “He threatened _you_.”

“I’m used to having my life threatened,” Javert shrugged. In fact, the time he had been a slave had been the only time when he wasn’t constantly prepared to die by another’s hand at any moment. Oddly enough, he found himself missing it.

Besides, Thénardier – or Montparnasse – had spoken the truth: the penalty of killing a slave was merely a fine, and no crime at all if the citizen argued that he killed in self-defence.

He turned towards Pontmercy: “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”

Pontmercy stared at him, hand waving shakily at the letter. “If I go to the police, then they’ll immediately want to check the truth of the villain’s claims, and…”

Javert frowned, barely resisting the urge to drag a hand through his hair. Valjean should be safe now that Javert no longer had the ability to arrest or testify against him. It was more than half a year since the barricades – nowadays named the ‘June Riots’ – and most of it had passed through people’s minds.

But there was still a warrant out for the participants of the barricades. And Jean Valjean was still known to be a runaway convict who had broken his parole.

His lips pressed into a line.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said finally, sighing. “They might have seen you come, and now they know Valjean’s address.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” Marius said helplessly. “There’s no way that I would show Cosette this, and… I didn’t know what to do.”

“Called, maybe?”

“Enough,” Valjean said, his voice heavy. He stepped between the two of them, shooting Javert a warning glance. “There’s no point in debating about what has already been done. Only how we should go on from here.”

Javert looked at the letter again, tracing a finger over the name at the bottom. Thénardier had been clever enough to not leave incriminating details like his name, so even if there weren’t so many details that could doom Valjean and Pontmercy both, there was no way to pin this crime on him.

Dammit.

“Maybe I should just pay him,” Pontmercy said, his eyes wild and desperate. “If I give him money…”

“Then you show yourself to be vulnerable to threats, and he’ll come again and again until your coffers have run dry,” Javert said, shaking his head. “There’s no reward in doing what men like Thénardier wanted, and there never will be.”

Pontmercy looked despairing at that proclamation, Valjean frustrated. Silence fell over them again.

There was only one solution to this: Thénardier must be brought to justice, and the police could not be called in.

Javert’s finger hooked over the ring over his collar and tugged on it, reminding himself of his place, of what he was and – more importantly – what he wasn’t. There was no way for him to bring Thénardier to lawful justice in his current position

“I have a possible solution,” he said finally. “But I can’t do it until I have your help, Valjean.”

Valjean nodded. He had been looking at Javert, eyes narrowing. “Whatever it is you require,” he said.

“I’ll find Thénardier,” he said quietly. “Him, the rest of his gang. And I’ll make sure that they can’t follow through to their threats.”

Pontmercy looked immediately relieved, but Valjean didn’t. He strode forward, grabbing Javert by the arms and staring him in the eye.

“You’ll be going to your death,” Valjean hissed. “If they figure you out, they’ll kill you, no doubts about that. If they didn’t, and you kill them, then…” He fell silent, unable to continue.

Then Javert would have proved himself to be too dangerous to even be a slave, and immediately sent for execution. Death if he did, death if he didn’t: a path that led to nothing but doom for him.

Doom in return for Valjean’s safety; it would be a good trade-off, but Javert knew that Valjean would never allow him to make it, damn the man.

“We can’t give in, we can’t go to the police, and you refuse to let me even try to kill them,” he listed dully. “What do you suggest we do, then?”

“I think…” Pontmercy bit his lip, interrupting Valjean before he could speak. “Maybe if… if I pretend to give in, and we lure them to some place… and then… we can call the police and have them arrested for assault on me when they figure out I didn’t have the money on me.”

Javert blinked, startled. “You would do that?” 

Pontmercy smiled at him, wry and weary. “You might not think very well of me, Monsieur, but I _was_ willing to give up my life at the barricades.”

So he had forgotten.

“That would put _you_ in danger,” Valjean shook his head. “If any harm comes to you, Marius, it will break Cosette’s heart.”

Javert finally gave in to the urge to drag his hand over his hair, then his beard. “Dammit, Valjean,” he said, frustrated. “There is no way out of this that won’t put _someone_ in danger in one way or another. And no,” he raised a hand. “I’m not going to let you even think of suggesting for it to be you.”

Valjean’s mouth clicked close, and he looked faintly amused. Javert ignored the faint hint of warmth he felt at that: this wasn’t the time for it.

“I have a compromise,” he said briskly. “We combine Pontmercy’s idea with mine. You put out a message that you agree to pay in order to delay them and raise their confidence. Meanwhile, I will try to find out where the gang’s hideout is and gather information on them. Figure out how they plan to proceed, and send a tip-off to the police before you’re in any kind of danger. Thénardier and the rest have long-standing warrants already; they don’t need another crime on the list to be arrested.”

Of all people, it was Pontmercy who spoke first. “Are you sure you can, Monsieur? You are quite…” he gave a helpless shrug.

“You know,” Javert said, a little dryly. “Just because I was caught while undercover _once_ doesn’t mean I’m terrible at it.”

“I’m not saying that!” the boy yelped, waving his hands in denial. “It’s…” He scrubbed at his hair for a moment before pointing at his throat.

Right. The collar. Caught up in a policeman’s line of thought as Javert was, he had completely forgotten just how conspicuous he was with the collar. Not to mention the limits on his mobility.

“I’ll figure something out,” he said. Scarves would work, especially if he dyed his hair and drew on a few scars to take attention away from his actual face. 

“I can have the proximity alarm removed,” Valjean offered. “I’ll make some excuse, like I need you to run errands for me or that I can’t have you cluttering up the places where I work or something like it.”

He looked physically pained saying those words, but Javert barely noticed. The pieces of a plan was already falling into place, and it might actually work.

“Then we have a plan of action,” he said, feeling himself for the first time ever since Valjean cut off the ropes on his wrist. He looked first at Pontmercy then Valjean, and was helpless to stop the upward curve of his mouth.

“But first, both of you need to tell Cosette about what is happening.”

“No!” The response from both men was immediate, and utterly predictable. Javert rolled his eyes.

“I wouldn’t want her to worry,” Pontmercy said. “Or afraid.”

“And she’ll be in danger,” Valjean said.

“She’ll be in danger whether she knew or not,” Javert pointed out. “It’s better for her to know in case something goes wrong and she walks into the situation entirely in the dark.”

Valjean opened his mouth to protest, but Javert steamrolled over him. “Besides, haven’t the two of you already learned something about hiding from her? Or underestimating her, for that matter?”

Pontmercy had the grace to actually look abashed, though Valjean’s jaw was still stubbornly set.

There was strength in the girl, he knew, despite her shyness and demure nature. Javert never could stay on the sidelines whenever he and Valjean visited the Pontmercy house, no matter how much he insisted. And it was Cosette who had convinced Valjean to take him as a slave in the first place; not to mention convincing Javert himself to go along with her idea.

Her gentleness had a quality that reminded him of steel hidden within silk. It constantly reminded him of Valjean.

But he had never seen her response to danger. He was making guesses here based on assumptions. Perhaps there was a part of him that was overcompensating, thinking overly well of Cosette if only because of what he had done to her mother.

He closed his eyes for a moment. The alleyway and the cobblestone street came to him less often nowadays, but they still came nonetheless. Blood on the walls. Blood on his feet. _Oh God, is there no mercy?_ Blood on his hands.

No. Not now. He pushed the thought away even though he knew they would come once more in his dreams.

“I’ll tell her, M. Jean,” Pontmercy said quietly. “M. Javert is right: she’ll be in danger whether or not she is told, and it is better for her to be warned. Besides…” He took a deep breath, shaking his head.

“I don’t think I can stand hiding from her again. The first time was already too much, Monsieur.”

Valjean’s eyes softened, and he pulled away from Javert to go to the boy. He rested a hand on his shoulder. “I did you a great injustice by asking you to promise what you did,” he said softly. “And I have not begged for your forgiveness yet. Will you forgive me, Marius?”

“Of course, M. Jean,” Pontmercy said, practically fervent. “There was nothing to forgive.”

Javert looked at the scene for a moment more before he turned and walked out of the room again. His feet took him to the front door, and he stopped at the shoe rack, looking at the chain resting on top of it.

Now that he could no longer arrest the man, this was the only thing that connected him to Valjean. 

He would not want to be freed of this, he realised. He would wear the chain for the rest of his life if it meant that he would have be bound to Valjean. He wished for it, in fact; wished selfishly, because he knew by now how much it cost Valjean to have it. He knew from the way Valjean always hesitated whenever he had to hook the chain onto the collar, and how he flinched away from the metal.

There was no pride left in him. None at all. The hand holding onto the chain had completely eradicated that sin from him.

It should be a triumph. He tried to grasp for it within himself. He met only an aching hollow.

Good; that was all he deserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d just like to say that I really, really didn’t expect such a strong response to my shameless pleading in my last chapter’s notes. Thank you _so_ much to everyone who commented! You all made my week, and I’m not even close to kidding on that.
> 
> Anyway, “to condemn someone for being blind to what he could not have seen is the same as to be cruel to a sightless man for not knowing the beauty of the sunset” is a Valjean-esque paraphrase (with additional Jesus allusion) of what the Bishop said in the Brick, Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 4: Works Corresponding to Words (Hapgood translation):
>
>> “Teach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.”
> 
> One of my favourite Hugo lines.
> 
> Next chapter will be the start of Book II. Things finally start happening outside of Javert’s head.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert is lengthened of his chain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Book II: _scaffolding_**   
> 
> 
>  
> 
> **Chapter One: Nested Cuckoo**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Detailed depiction of the mechanisms of slavery in this AU; Roma OC (warning even though I tried my damned best to keep away from stereotypes as possible); brief depiction of parental abuse; explicit description of execution via electric chair.

The first thing Valjean did in the morning was to take him to the auction house.

It wouldn’t be another few months until the next seasonal sale, when the number of prisoners decreed by the law to become slaves would grow large enough for there to be a proper auction, but his previous handler was standing behind the polished reception desk. His hands, knuckles large from constant overwork, were folded on top of the wood.

He raised an eyebrow when he saw Javert on Valjean’s chain. “Well, it didn’t take a month,” the man drawled. “I’d say that I’m surprised, but I’m not.”

Javert was tempted to snort, but he knew better to test his luck out here, in public. So he ducked his head instead to hide the near-contemptuous smirk on his face. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the convict’s spectre hover around Valjean’s frame once more.

“I’m not here to return him,” Valjean said flatly. “I’m here to request for the removal of the proximity alarm.”

The handler’s eyebrow went up. “Ah,” he said. He looked from Valjean to Javert just once before his eyes settled on Valjean, an oily smile curving up his face. “That will be simple enough, Monsieur. But I remember selling that slave, and I do not recall your face.”

Valjean took out the thick envelope from beneath his arm and practically slammed it on the desk. “He was a gift,” he said curtly. “Now, may I have the forms?”

Sliding the envelope towards himself, the handler looked even more doubtful as he took out the sheaf of papers from it, shuffling through the various pages. “Transfer took place a little less than three weeks ago,” he murmured to himself. “Why haven’t I heard about this?”

Neither Valjean nor Javert deigned that with a response. Well, Javert would have liked the option to speak, to remind the man that he wasn’t nearly as important as he thought himself to be, but he knew that silence was his best defence at the moment. If he had to address Valjean, then the man would likely have taken Valjean’s order to be a sign that he was far too soft to keep a dangerous man like Javert.

Finally, the handler nodded. “It all seems to be in order, Monsieur,” he told Valjean, still with that oily smile. He reached beneath the desk, drawing out a stack of forms before stepping away from it. “Please come with me.”

They walked towards one of the backrooms in the auction house, one that Javert had never seen before. Collars hung on every wall, ranging from the standard metal-and-plastic that Javert was wearing to heavy steel with spikes on the insides to decorative ones made of thin leather and cloth, almost harmless-looking if not for the ring of plastic in the centre that held the chips for the proximity alarm and the defiance deterrent. There were chains as well, heavy metal links and thin silver and some that looked exactly like a dog’s leash; all equipped with hooks with chips that could take fingerprints and prevent a slave from removing it themselves.

Javert swallowed, and turned his eyes away.

The handler led Valjean to the large table in the centre. He splayed his hands on it, and the surface glowed to life beneath transparent plastic after scanning his fingerprints.

“Open file for slave number 87452. “ Holographic projectors turned the air in front of him into a series of words and numbers that glowed in mid-air. 

As they had walked into the room, Javert had kept his eyes away from Valjean. Now he looked at the man, taking in the tension in his shoulders and the clenched fists. He wished he was surprised; wished he still had the capacity to suspect that Valjean would be pleased that Javert was now known as a number just like himself.

It would be his right to feel satisfied, or pleased in some way. But Javert had learned over the past weeks – no, longer, ever since the barricades – that Valjean was a strange man who never did make use of any of his rights for cruelty.

The handler waved his hands in the air, sliding the words up. After a moment, he nodded. 

“Request from Master: Removal of proximity alarm. Begin recording.” A quiet _beep_ sounded as the machine acknowledged the request.

He smiled at Valjean once more. “So, Monsieur, before we begin regarding your reasons, will you tell me what 87452 has been doing the past weeks he has been with you?”

Valjean’s fists clenched even tighter. Javert watched, a little fascinated, as he took a deep breath and seemed to remember himself. Then he started to speak, outlining every single thing that had happened for the past three or so weeks. Javert listened, letting the words wash over him, and hid a frown by ducking his head.

There was not a single mention of Javert’s little… fits. Or his meetings with Clarisse and Frey, much less Azelma. In fact, Valjean seemed to speak _around_ the events more than he spoke _of_ them.

 _Liar_ , the policeman within him said. _Yes_ , Javert agreed. Valjean wasn’t fabricating a single thing, but he omitted so much that Javert could barely recognise the events being spoken about despite having been there himself. Clarisse had become a shapeless, genderless blob of a person; Frey sounded like an old monk by Valjean’s descriptions; and Javert himself had become a creature formed of strong outlines and filled with shadows.

His lips flattened into a line. He should speak up; he should tell Valjean to speak the truth. 

But he could recognise that Valjean told his lies for the sake of protection. Not of himself, but of a runaway wife who would immediately have been arrested; of a revolutionary operating a nigh-illegal school servicing those whom the law would, or had already, condemn. Of Javert himself, for any signs of mental instability in a slave would immediately have them sent for execution due to their uselessness in their society.

Javert let out a breath, closing his eyes. A face flashed in front in him, hair tucked deep within a wimple. He hadn’t thought of Sister Simplice in years, but he remembered her now: her lies to him about the location of a M. Madeleine, which had stopped him from entering the hospital room until…

Blood on the pillow. His nails dug into his palm. He shoved the images away harder than ever; not _now_.

When he could finally concentrate again, the handler was nodding. “It all sounds reasonable, Monsieur,” he nodded. “But as you know, we must wait for the court to approve before…” he trailed off, eyes widening at the sight of the notes in Valjean’s hand, before held up to him.

There must be more than a thousand francs there.

The man’s eyes darted towards him. Javert deliberately kept his own gaze away, staring blankly at the wall as if pretending that he was not present.

“Yes sir,” the handler nodded, practically eager. “I do understand. You’re a good judge of character, of course, and you are perfectly capable of keeping charge of your slave.”

He held out his hand. When Valjean passed over the money, he practically snatched the entire stack, fanning them out for a moment – checking that they were all legitimate notes – before shoving them into his pockets. He nodded.

“Well then, Monsieur, will you like to choose your new collar for 87452? We have various types made out of different fabrics—”

“Just the standard model will do,” Valjean interrupted. “Without the proximity alarm.”

“Of course, of course.”

Then, as Valjean watched silently and Javert tried to keep his eyes averted, he moved over to one of the walls, picking out a collar that looked identical to the one Javert was wearing.

“This is a standard model with a tracking device instead of a proximity alarm,” the handler told Valjean, smiling once more. “Will you like to do the honour, Monsieur?”

Valjean hesitated for a moment, then nodded. Javert bit his lip, still looking away even as he tipped his head back up. Slowly, Valjean came closer.

Heavily-callused fingertips brushed over Javert’s neck. The scabs had healed and fallen off long ago, but heat burst at the touch anyway, and Javert bit the inside of his lip hard to stop himself from gasping. The weight on his neck that he had almost gotten used to this past almost-month lifted, and disappeared.

When Valjean dropped the collar onto the table, it was nearly hard enough to be called a slam. Javert flinched.

“Look at me,” Valjean murmured, low and soft.

Javert couldn’t. Not when his throat felt strange, as if the removal of the collar had torn it out as well. He could barely breathe.

But he forced his head down and met Valjean’s gaze. Those dark eyes were burning bright and intense, stars caught within the depths, and filled with… With pain, deep and aching, as if a hand had reached inside Valjean and drew out the worst of his memories, the worst of his unhealed wounds.

The new collar snapped over Javert’s neck, the sound of clicking metal like a gunshot that paradoxically made his breathing ease. There was familiarity in the weight of the metal, and… and _pleasure_ in the unforgiving chill of it against his skin, a sudden rush of blood to his throat that was not new, but nearly forgotten.

Valjean’s face swam in front of him. His knees ached, legs threatening to bend. He would kneel, he realised; kneel and kiss Valjean’s hands, his feet. He tore his eyes away but his gaze landed on the old collar, abandoned with its chain spilled over the surface of the table, silver glimmering in the white fluorescent light. His hand twitched by his side, wanting to reach out to it, to give it to Valjean and kneel there at his feet, staring up at him with reverence as he clipped the chain on and _pulled_ —

A hand landed on his shoulder, shaking him. Javert jerked, shuddered. _Base_ , he thought, the word heavy and bitter on his tongue. _You’re base_.

He couldn’t look at Valjean now. His eyes fixed upon his feet. Despite three weeks of wear, the leather shoes still looked shiny. Valjean’s had dust on it. Javert’s mouth ached, wanting— he slapped a hand over his mouth, dug his thumb into the edge of it until he felt his gum, his teeth.

Then he nodded. No words, no questions, nothing that would give them away while the handler was still in the room.

Valjean looked at him for another moment. Then he reattached the chain to the collar, gripped Javert by the arm, and practically dragged him out of the room.

***

There was a storm boiling in those dark eyes, and Javert could almost see words bulging at the corners of Valjean’s mouth. There were questions, surely, but he didn’t know what they were, and he didn’t know what answers he could give. There was nothing he could possibly say that would explain himself and yet not reveal the sordid and vile creature that he was.

“Javert,” Valjean said once they had exited the auction house. He opened his mouth, and Javert immediately stepped backwards, already looking around himself for escape routes.

Somehow, he was saved by a series of running footsteps.

“Knew it was you, cuckoo.”

The old nickname; a half-remembered voice. Javert turned around, Valjean fading out of his sight and attention.

If Javert had a collar and chain, then this man was practically draped in them: wrists wrapped in iron, ankles jangling as he walked, and loose links dropping down his chest. He was dressed in bright orange with no shoes for his feet. His face was thin, nearly gaunt, and the skin there was leathery – it was only his dark, deep-set eyes that gave his race away.

Once, Javert had known him to be a handsome man. He laughed often, and had a deft hand at cards that he had taught anyone who had any curiosity to learn, though few had the kind of talent he had. Once, Javert had known him to wear voluminous sleeves that draped at the knuckles, but now his arms were bare up to the shoulders, with ragged scars on them, some resembling track marks.

Years, practically decades, had passed since he had seen anyone from the camps. He thought he had left it all behind when he was first transferred out of Toulon into police-work, becoming a _gendarme_ in small-towns where _gitans_ rarely went. 

But it all came back to him too easily: the smell of horses and straws and the sea; small bells jangling to the rhythm of footsteps; low murmurs of voices in a tongue he had once thought of as _home_ before…

Once, he would have thought “before he knew better”, but now he didn’t know what to think at all.

“Khulai,” he greeted, voice remaining steady. His accent, he realised, remained the same.

The man laughed, a harsh cackle that was nothing like the light laughter he once gave when Javert had said something particularly humorous, and the twitch of his hands did not resemble the easy way he used them to talk.

“So the cuckoo still remembers the language of the trueborn chicks,” he mocked.

Javert had nothing to refute that – he did remember, no matter how long had passed and how much he had tried to forget – so he let his eyes rest on those heavy chains. He knew what they were, of course: the chains of slaves who worked at the auction house, not dangerous enough to warrant the execution chair, but not useful enough to be sold, either.

Or, he realised, not _lucky_ enough to have those who would show them mercy.

“What did you do?” he heard himself asking.

Khulai’s face stilled entirely. He laughed again, dragging a hand over the short-cropped hair that used to be long enough to wrap around his neck. Like a scarf, in winter and early spring.

“I tried to live,” he said. “I was stupid enough to get caught.”

His eyes narrowed, and a familiar gleam came to them. Javert had seen those eyes before: the cruelty of men in orange jumpsuits and chains who saw a throat that they could rip out, some blood they could spill to try to heat their own.

“It serves you right,” he said, a dreadful relish in those words. “Cuckoo who pecked all the trueborn chicks to death.”

“I never arrested any of you,” Javert said, because that was true too. 

“No, but you _told_ ,” Khulai hissed, jerking forward. His chains slammed against his arms and thighs and stomachs. “You told and you stood there while they took us away, like you never sat by our fires and ate our food.”

 _You broke the law_ , Javert wanted to saw, but the words were stuck in his throat. What did the law know? What did _he_ know, as a boy trying so hard to be irreproachable, about the righteousness of men trying to put food on the table for those around them?

“I did,” he said. 

There was the slightest shift beside him, and Javert was suddenly and terribly aware of Valjean’s presence. _Look at me now_ , he thought. Even being born in a jail cell couldn’t be worse than this: a boy born of an adopted _gadjo_ who betrayed all those who tried to take him in.

Khulai’s eyes went wide, the cruelty dying in them. He stared at Javert for long moments, clearly disbelieving, and Javert met his gaze and let the fires of his sins wrap around him. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

“You should’ve realised that long ago,” he finally said, and turned and went back to the auction house.

Javert watched him leave with the shuffling steps of the condemned. His hands clenched even tighter in his pockets, nails digging into his skin. Somehow, he found the list of his sins growing and growing, stretching far longer than his chain.

He turned to Valjean. The man was looking at him with brows furrowed, as if a mystery had unfolded itself in front of him, and he was looking for patterns. Javert allowed his lips to curl up into a bitter smirk.

“My mother was adopted by the camp outside Toulon as a child,” he told Valjean, because he might as well. “They took her in even though she was white, and she grew up amongst them. When she was grown, she developed a talent for fortune-telling, and so that was how she learned to earn her keep.”

Pausing, he tipped his head up, staring at the bright, mid-morning skies. “I was born in a cell. After she served her time, she went home, and brought me with her. I lived amongst them until…” he shrugged. “You heard what Khulai said.”

Valjean continued to look at him for a long moment more before he shook his head.

“No,” he said, quiet but fierce. “Knowing that doesn’t change the kind of man I know you to be.”

“It should,” Javert said, nails digging even harder into flesh. “It should be a warning to you about the kind of man I am; about the treatment I give to those who show me kindness.”

Valjean shook his head. He reached out with both hands, closing them around Javert’s wrists. He brought them up, running callused thumbs over knuckles until Javert had to flex his fingers so he wouldn’t shudder. He didn’t – couldn’t – pull away.

“It doesn’t,” Valjean said again.

“You’re going to be killed by your mercy one day,” Javert said, words too weak for the warning they should be.

Predictably, Valjean laughed. “That’s the risk I’m willing to take,” he said. “Especially with you.” 

Before Javert could even ask what he meant by that, he was already letting go and stepping back. “Shall we go?”

Javert looked once more at the doors of the auction house. Khulai was already gone, and there was no echo left of his dragging footsteps or clanging chains. He closed his eyes.

“Yes.”

There was nothing else he could do here.

At least – he thought, nearly hysterical – Valjean was distracted from the collar.

***

“I don’t know! I really don’t! She never told me anything, and I haven’t heard a word ‘bout him either!” Female, desperate, young and terrified.

“If I find out that you’re lying, girl…” Male, older, threatening.

“I’m not!” 

Javert pressed himself into the stairwell as a resounding slap sounded, the muffled sound loud enough to echo down the bare and dusty hallway. He clenched his teeth against the instinct to immediately barge in and stop what was happening, because he recognised the voice. He recognised both voices.

A moment later, the door slammed open, and a man’s voice said, cruel and wheedling at the same time: “You’ll tell me if you heard anything on the streets, girl? You’ll be my pair of ears?”

“Yeah,” Azelma said, sounding exhausted and small. “Yeah, Dad. I’ll do that.”

“Good.”

Thénardier stepped out. Javert pulled his ragged brown cap even further down his face, ducking his head to hide the collar beneath his scarf as much as possible. The man stormed down the stairs without even looking around, a thunderous scowl on his face and his dreads practically smacking against his face. Javert stood where he was until he heard the man’s footsteps fade away.

Then he straightened, climbing up the last few steps until he reached the landing of Azelma’s floor. He smoothed out the scowl on his face before he reached out to knock on her door.

“Please, Dad! I really don’t know anything!”

“Azelma,” he said, leaning in and speaking as low as he could to be heard through the wood. “It’s me.”

The door pulled open with so much force that Javert nearly fell over. His eyes met a pair of bright blue ones before Azelma gasped, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him inside without any warning, closing the door and locking it behind him.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed. “Didn’t you see? Are you stupid?”

Javert blinked. He looked at her for a moment before he shrugged, dropping his hand on top of her clenched one, trying to get her to release him. “I came here to warn you that your father’s appeared again,” he said quietly. “But I see that I didn’t have to.”

At those words, Azelma paled. She let go of him, both arms wrapping around herself as she trembled slightly. She didn’t speak, didn’t seem capable of it, and Javert stared at her, at a complete loss, before he gently placed his hands on her shoulders.

She jerked away, retreating crab-like towards the couch and dropping down onto it. “You should go,” she said, the words mangled by tiny gasps. “He might come back. You need to go.”

He had never been a man for hatred – there used to be too much righteousness, too much obsession, for there to be any passion to spare. But now he hated Thénardier more than words could say: let him threaten Javert; let him threaten even Cosette and Pontmercy; but the man’s own daughter was clearly terrified of him, and that was…

In the eyes of the law – those blindfolded eyes of Lady Justice – children were under the jurisdiction of their parents, beholden to those who had given them life and given to them to do with as they saw fit.

But this… this was entirely _wrong._ The law might not see it to be so, but it was. 

Slowly, Javert walked over to the couch, careful that his dirty, threadbare sneakers slapped hard against the bare concrete. He dropped down to his knees in front of her, taking her hands into hers cautiously and holding onto them.

“I’m not afraid of him,” he said quietly. “And I’m going to make sure that you won’t ever be again either.”

It was a foolish promise to make, and one he wasn’t sure if he could fulfil. And Azelma clearly knew that, because she looked at him with eyes wide and staring with disbelief.

But at least she was looking at him instead of dwelling on memories and fear.

“Fauchelevent and I have a plan,” he said. “If things go well, we’ll have your father behind bars where he belongs, and he won’t ever be able to hurt you again.” For one thing, Thénardier would most likely be executed, given his list of crimes.

Azelma pulled away again, drawing her knees up to her chest as she hugged them. “I should be reassured by that. I know I should. He’s not a good man, and he… he scares me whenever he’s angry. But he’s still… he’s still my father, Monsieur, and I… I don’t know what to do anymore.”

She laughed, tugging at the ends of her hair as she buried her face between her knees. “You probably think I’m a fool for thinking like that.”

Perhaps it was the after-effects of seeing Khulai and being reminded of what he wanted to forget for so long, but Javert found himself saying: “My father was a convict.” He looked away from her and said, more softly, “He was a murderer, actually.”

“What?” Azelma had lifted her head.

Javert leaned back, dropping down to sit on the ground with crossed legs. “I won’t say that I know how you feel to be scared of your own father,” he said, slow and hesitant. “I didn’t meet him until his execution.”

His mother was imprisoned herself – for the crime of fraud – and by the time she had served her six years’ time, there had only been a few months before his father was slated to be executed. He remembered his mother going to the prison every single day, bringing him with her as she begged and begged to see her husband, if only for just once.

They granted her wish. Well, she _did_ ask to see her husband instead of _meeting_ him properly; she did also ask that her son was to _see_ his father as well. Javert’s lips twisted.

That was cruelty, he knew now. The cruelty of officers with little mercy to spare for those whom they saw to be convicts, lower than the trash littering the roads; cruelty backed up by the strong, cold arm of the law.

“A murderer?” 

He shrugged. “A pirate, a smuggler, whatever you called it,” he said, tipping his head up to look at the ceiling. “He would have been sentenced to life in prison if he hadn’t killed a police officer during his arrest.”

“Oh,” Azelma said, her voice small. She hugged herself even tighter. “What was… what was it like?”

“To see him?” Javert asked. He looked at her for a moment before he shrugged again. “I don’t remember.”

This was the first lie he had ever told her: he _did_ remember, and with a clarity that years had not erased. The sight of his father, barely anything recognisably human about him beneath the torn rags of his prison jumpsuit and the scraggly beard, as he walked towards the execution chair, half-dragged by the faceless guards by his side. His mother had made a sound then, a strangled scream, and the convict had looked up and had seen them.

Javert’s clearest memory was the sight of his eyes and the set of his jaw, both exactly like his own now. The rest of his father’s face was a complete blur. He didn’t even remember the words the condemned had tried to say, only this: the way he gritted his teeth as if trying his best to keep his composure as the switch was turned on, and how he gave in and started screaming. His mother collapsed then, sobbing into her hands, and even the guards had averted their eyes.

His father’s last moments were witnessed only by Javert himself and the executioner. As the smell of death, cooked flesh and shit had filled the room, Javert remembered distinctly thinking:

 _This is my future_.

“Is that why you…” Azelma started. Javert looked at her, cocking his head to the side, and she made a helpless motion towards him.

“No,” he said, and that was not a lie. The man who died on the chair was not his father and Javert had never known him to be so. Even if he did, Javert had already been long-convinced about the righteousness of the law by then.

“That’s not why.”

He remembered the precise moment when he decided why: it was when he first realised that the guards never went hungry or cold no matter how terrible the winters or how scarce the food; when he saw that most convicts were mostly sinews and bone even while the guards ate enough to have bulging bellies.

Later, at the camps, he realised that his mother’s people might share food with him, but he was never full either, and they all had the gaunt cheeks of people used to starving. And he had looked across the land towards the towering walls of Toulon. There were only two paths one could enter that place by, he knew.

One led to eternal hunger, painful death, and a forgotten grave; and the other… the other…

As a member of the prison guards and later as a police officer, he never went hungry if he spent his money wisely; and even during those times he did, he had the law and righteousness to fill him.

Now he was a slave, and he was left hollow, all pride in his previous works ripped out of him. But he was still not going hungry. He hadn’t been, for a long time. Yet when he looked at Azelma’s face, he recognised the growing hollowness of her cheeks, the starkness of the bones on her wrists.

“I just didn’t want to be hungry anymore.”

Their eyes met for a moment more before she sighed. “Why did you tell me that?”

Javert didn’t know. Maybe he just wanted her to stop looking at him as if he was a good person; that he was anywhere close to saint-like. Most likely it was simply because he just wanted _someone_ to know, and he knew that this was something he would never tell Valjean.

Not because Valjean would judge him for it, but because Valjean would offer him sympathy and kindness, and within those things Javert would realise once more that he had been a terrible hypocrite. He had enough reminders to last a lifetime.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually, rubbing a hand over his own mouth.

“Whatever it is, I…” she hesitated. “Thank you, Monsieur.”

Javert opened his mouth to tell her that her thanks was the _last_ thing he wished from her, but she wasn’t looking at him anymore, instead staring at a point on the ground.

“I still don’t want to see my Dad in jail, let alone dead,” she said, biting her lip. “But I don’t have to… I don’t have to be like him. I can choose another path. I knew that, but I didn’t really _know_ until now.”

She looked up to him, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “But you did it, right?”

Javert stared at her. Of all the things he thought she would gather from what he said, this hadn’t even been on the list.

“That’s not…” he shook his head. “Mine wasn’t the right path.” 

“Well, I’m not going to be a cop!” she laughed, the sound seemed to burst out of her. “That’s not what I mean. Just that… I grew up amongst criminals, but I don’t have to be one, right? I can be a good person.”

Before he even realised it, he found himself gripping her wrist. Her eyes widened, but Javert barely saw it. “Just because someone is a criminal doesn’t mean that they’re not a good person,” he said, low and quiet.

If there was anything he had learned ever since the barricades, it was this. And he would be damned if he would allow her to believe that without correcting her.

Slowly, Azelma nodded. She bit her lip before raising her hand. Time seemed to slow as Javert watched it approach him, pushing across the scarf to brush, very tentatively, over the collar on the neck.

“I know that,” she said, her lips curling upwards into a full-blown smile. “I know that already, Monsieur.”

Javert closed his eyes. What _was_ it about the people around him continuously insisting that he was a good man despite knowing what they did, despite seeing all that he had done? Valjean he could take, because the man would probably insist that there was something good left in Thénardier as well. But Azelma had once been afraid of him…

No, she had to be mistaken. Biased at best. Javert wasn’t a good man; he was trying now, but what did such efforts matter when he could feel his sins pressing down on him at every moment, aching like carved words on his back?

He pushed away from her, standing up and readjusting the scarf so the collar was once more hidden. “You...” _shouldn’t think like that_ , he wanted to say, but swallowed the words back. Instead, he licked his lips, taking in the sight of her gradually-hollowing cheeks again.

“You should come and live with Fauchelevent,” he said. “It’ll help you save on rent, at least.”

Azelma’s mouth fell open and she gaped at him. Before she could even think of a protest, Javert barrelled on.

“I don’t mean right now, because it will be too dangerous. But afterwards… I don’t think he would mind, and he has enough room in that house of his.”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I… I don’t know,” she said, sounding uncertain. “You’re right about the rent, but I don’t know M. Fauchelevent that well, and…” She tugged on her hair, giving him an uncertain smile.

“I’ll think about it?”

He didn’t expect her to agree right away. Not when she seemed to have spent the past months he was behind bars to try to build a life for herself.

“That’s all I ask,” he said. Then he hesitated, because that’s not what he came for. He came to warn her, of course, but also…

She seemed to notice his hesitation, because she ducked her head down, fiddling with the edges of her sleeves for a moment. “I… I want to tell you where my father’s hideouts are, but…” she took her breath. “But I don’t think I can. No matter what he did or what he’s trying to do now, I... he’s still…”

Javert nodded, unsurprised. 

“Then I won’t ask,” he said. “But if you want to ever tell, then… well,” he shrugged. “You know where to find me.”

“What if I don’t make a decision in time?”

“I’ll find other sources of information,” Javert said. He gave her a lopsided smile. “I _was_ a police officer, you know.”

Azelma lifted her head, returning his smile with an uncertain one of her own. “I remember,” she said. “Are you going to go off now, then?”

“Yeah,” Javert nodded. “Just one more thing: do you have a piece of paper?”

She blinked at him. Then she stood up, walking over to the table shoved over the corner. When she handed him paper and a ballpoint pen, Javert scribbled a number and an address on it.

“If your father comes back, will you come over?” he asked once she took it. “Or call, at the very least.” 

It was a dangerous decision to make, he knew: he might be giving Thénardier both Valjean’s location and a way to contact him. But he remembered the way she had looked at him when she first opened the door, and the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

She bit her lip and folded the paper, tucking it into a pocket. “I can’t promise to,” she said hesitantly.

“I’m not looking for a promise,” Javert replied. “Just an assurance that you will have somewhere to go if you feel like you can’t be safe here.”

If there was anyone who could make anyone feel safe, it would be Valjean. And Javert wasn’t lying when he said he was sure that Valjean would welcome her into his home.

Azelma nodded. “I... Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Javert said as he headed to the door. “He’s coming over to look for you because of me, after all.”

Before she could refute him, or even thank him again, he left through the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … I did say everything is a plot point, right? Right.
> 
> By the way, there’s no shipping of Javert/Azelma here. For one thing, she’s sixteen and he’s forty-eight. For another thing… She has such a large role because 1) that one decision Javert made to protect her changed both their lives entirely, 2) their journeys towards self-discovery have striking similarities, and 3) Javert can’t be entirely reliant on Valjean for his redemption, because that will skew the power dynamics even further, and the whole non-consensual slavery thing already makes it skeevy enough already.
> 
> By the way, 3) is the reason why this damned thing never seems to end and has no porn whatsoever. Goddammit, I should’ve just made Valjean the slave and written Toulon-era fic.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert commits an unlawful act.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Book II: Chapter Two: Splintering Chiaroscuro**
> 
> **Warnings:** … Nothing again.

It was only the third filthy waterhole that he loitered in that Javert heard anything useful regarding Thénardier and his gang.

Night had fallen long ago, and even the witching hour had passed. Javert hadn’t realised until now just how much investigation relied upon case files and records. Going undercover for information without ready informants and lists of past haunts and associates to direct him felt like walking blind into a shootout.

But there was too much at stake to give up without trying. Besides, Javert had done this for years.

“Richer than God and none of the money traceable?” A hoarse, disbelieving laugh. “Come on now, you’ve got to be kidding me. Nothing that sounds so good can be true.”

The speaker was a broad, thick-set brute of a man, white with tanned skin and roughened knuckles. It wasn’t him Javert was watching.

His addressee continued to clean his nails with his small dagger, seeming unconcerned about the blatant challenge. “Well, it’s up to you whether to believe,” he shrugged. “Facts are these: we need people, and we’re willing to pay.”

He grinned, showing a mouth full of straight, white teeth. “Very well, in fact.”

“What’s the catch?” the brute demanded. “There’s got to be one.”

“You guys have Brujon, don’t you?” That was another man taking notice of the conversation – older, smaller, wearing an overly-large and almost new coat that was definitely stolen. “Why need more?”

“The mark is strong,” Montparnasse drawled. “As good as four men, it’s said. We’re looking for… insurance.”

The two men who were interested looked uncertain immediately, murmuring amongst themselves.

Montparnasse scowled for a moment before his features smoothed back out into a smile. “He’s got that whoreson dog of an Inspector as a slave,” he announced. “If that means anything to any of you.”

There was a second of utter silence and stillness in the hovel of a bar before everything burst into noise. Suddenly, Montparnasse was surrounded by men, all of them clamouring for information, some immediately volunteering “for a chance to punch that sonovabitch in the nuts.”

Javert had heard himself called worse, sometimes even to his face. He only kept to his corner, calmly taking a drag from the cigarette dangling between his fingers.

Sure enough, Montparnasse noticed him immediately. “Hey you! Monsieur, you in the corner!”

Grinding his cigarette into the ashtray, Javert stood. He knew that he was tall, dwarfing nearly every man here, and he made use of his full height now. They wouldn’t recognise him, he knew – most of these men knew him only by word and reputation. And after he left Azelma, Javert had used a temporary dye to colour his hair a dirty-blonde, drawn on an eye-catching scar from the edge of one brow to his chin, and streaked his face with dust. And he wasn’t in his uniform, instead in the same ragged brown cap as before, plus an ill-fitting tan jacket, ragged jeans and too-large shirt, all matched with a frayed scarf (with his chain hidden beneath) and threadbare sneakers.

Nothing that Inspector Javert would be caught dead in. He had learned his lesson from the boy at the barricades, the one who died far too young.

“You’re talking to me?” he let his words slur from his usual crispness, injecting a hint of the streets into it.

“It’s a rare man to not have a grudge against Inspector Javert,” Montparnasse said, raising an eyebrow.

Javert stifled a completely inappropriate laugh immediately, shrugging instead.

“Oh, I’ve got one,” he said, waving vaguely at his own face. “He might as well have given me this, the bastard. But see, I’m a man who likes to be sure ‘bout what he’s doing before he does it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say we kill this mark of yours,” Javert leaned his hip against the table. “We kill even that bastard he’s got on a leash. But how’re you going to get any money from that?”

Montparnasse looked insulted, like he should with his intelligence so blatantly doubted. “We’re not going to _kill_ them,” he sniffed, twirling the knife between his fingers. “We just need them handled, let’s just put it that way. Make sure they don’t do anything funny while someone else collects the money.”

So that was why they were recruiting, then: Montparnasse, and probably Thénardier as well, wouldn’t trust anyone else to get the money, so they needed stupid muscle. Probably to put a gun to someone’s head, or to threaten to break their necks without meaning to actually do so.

“Yeah? And how are you sure that they’re going to keep the money?”

“Said it’s untraceable, didn’t I?” Montparnasse scowled. “Man like that, he’d probably keep it in his house.”

_His house_. The pieces fell into place, and Javert was careful to not give away the hitch in his breath. So that was what they were planning: the threat to Pontmercy was only a ruse, with the real target being Rue Plumet 55. It wasn’t Pontmercy’s money they wanted, but Valjean’s.

It made sense: Thénardier most likely guessed that Valjean wouldn’t have, like Pontmercy, have his money in a bank; he wouldn’t be willing to give records of the notes’ serial numbers to the police to track down either. If only because then Valjean would get into trouble as he was still on the run.

That was, of course, if Javert assumed that Montparnasse was telling the truth, or that Thénardier had given him full information about his plans, or even that the gang would not decide on other actions. He cursed the fact that he only had himself: there was no way he could possibly guard both the Gillenormand estate and Valjean’s house at the same time, much less wherever the gang would set as an exchange location.

Hell, if he still had the police’s resources, he would have even posted guards at Azelma’s door in case Thénardier decided to drop in again.

No point thinking of what he could not do.

“You’ve seen the money, then?” he challenged, crossing his arms. “You _know_ that it’s there?”

Murmurs broke out through the bar again. For a moment, Montparnasse looked uncertain before his scowl grew even fiercer. “Yeah, I have,” he said, eyes glinting fiercely.

“Will I get to see it before signing up?” Javert asked, inserting a hint of mockery into that voice because he knew that Montparnasse was lying. He had been living in Valjean’s house for over three weeks, and _he_ hadn’t seen a hint of the money.

“You’ll see it when the mark hands it over,” Montparnasse replied. His lips curled into a smirk. “As a gift.”

“Meaning that you haven’t seen it,” Javert pointed out. “Or even know that it exists.”

Montparnasse opened his mouth. Then he closed it, eyes narrowing. “Why are you asking so many questions, Monsieur?” The title sounded like an insult in his drawling tone.

Javert shrugged, careful to not allow himself to tense. “Like I said, I like to know what I’m going into before signing up,” he said dryly. “If the mark’s strong enough that even Brujon needs backup, I’d rather not head in blind. It’d be stupid to die before I get paid.”

“There needs to be trust before a plan can be carried out smoothly,” Montparnasse said, seemingly out of the blue.

“You haven’t given me much to trust,” Javert barked a laugh.

“Neither have you.”

“True enough,” he wasn’t going to deny that. “But until I see some concrete proof that you’ve got something, I ain’t signing for anything.”

He yanked his cap further down his face, dropping back down to his chair. His gaze didn’t leave Montparnasse’s as he lit up another cigarette.

The atmosphere of the bar had changed. Apparently the chance to get a hit into the “whoreson dog of an inspector” wasn’t enough for the men here, especially when Javert had casted doubt upon the reality of the money manifesting. He heard a few whispers here and there about “police” and “who knows if he still has friends”, and hid his mouth behind another drag of his cigarette.

It would be amusing that a bunch of crooks had more faith in the camaraderie amongst the police than he did, if not for the bitterness on his tongue that had nothing to do with tobacco.

Montparnasse had started playing with his knife again, looking around the bar with narrowed eyes. When no one else came forth with offers or questions, he threw a scowl in Javert’s direction before heading for the door.

“Hey,” Javert raised his voice right before the man left entirely. “If you’ve got any proper info ‘bout this, you know where to find help.” He swept his arm around him mockingly.

“Yeah,” Montparnasse said, a hint of danger in his eyes. “I guess I do.”

He left.

Javert sat there, still smoking, as the hovel settled back into its usual activities. He called for another beer from the bartender and took a couple of sips. He didn’t really want the alcohol – or the nicotine, for the matter – but if he left now, it would make it too obvious that he came here for information.

Instead, he let himself sink into contemplation. 

The Patron-Minette was recruiting. Montparnasse might have been unlucky here, but Javert didn’t know if others of the gang had greater success, and he would be pushing his disguise if he tried to follow the man tomorrow night. This meant that he might be faced with more than five men when they came collecting for Pontmercy’s promised money. Even if he included Valjean into the equation… even if he included Pontmercy…

There was no way the chips would fall in their favour with that kind of odds, especially since Thénardier and the rest would be well-versed in brutal street brawls and Javert only had a couple of civilians by his side. If they counted only brute strength, then Valjean might have the advantage, but Javert wasn’t going to risk the man’s safety, especially since he knew that Thénardier would not come unarmed.

He took another drag of his cigarette, thinking again. There was the possibility of waiting for Montparnasse here tomorrow night, following him back to the hideout, and killing the entire gang before they could make a move. But he couldn’t do that: if three against five was bad odds, then one against five was even worse. Doing that was akin to throwing himself in front of guns, or even the electric chair.

And there was that damned promise that he made to Valjean.

Dammit. 

Finishing his beer, he headed for the door, tipping his cap down at the few who raised their heads when they saw him leave. He walked out of the bar, breathing in the scent of the city. Out of the corner of his eyes, he heard a particular whirr of engines – police cars out on patrol.

There was no way he was going to win this unless he had more backup, more resources.

Pride; it all came down to pride. Javert shoved his hands into his pocket, feeling nails prick against skin again as he headed down the road towards Rue Plumet.

He had to contact the police. He had to make sure that they understood the threat to Pontmercy and Valjean without them looking too closely at the case. In fact, he had to be absolutely certain that any officer that came would not even think about looking at the letter Thénardier sent.

Javert was going to break the law again.

***

Valjean stared at him the moment he came back.

Giving him a glance, Javert shrugged. He knew he looked like a vagrant – that was precisely the point, and he had actually exchanged clothes with one of them – and he toed off the sneakers. They looked entirely out of place in Valjean’s well-kept house.

“I gave away the nice shoes you got me,” he said dryly. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No,” Valjean shook his head. “Javert, what- what were you doing?”

“Gathering information,” Javert shrugged. “Do you have Thénardier’s letter?”

“I…” Valjean looked uncertain for a moment before he shook his head out, reaching out to grab Javert by the wrist. “I do have it, because Marius left it behind so Cosette won’t see it and be afraid, but, Javert… what did you find out? What are you trying to do now?”

There was a moment when Javert debated ignoring the man. He could possibly find the letter if he tried hard enough, he knew, but Valjean would be trailing him throughout, and the irony of that was too much for him to deal with right now.

He dragged a hand through his hair.

“Thénardier’s gang is recruiting,” he reported, his tone falling naturally back into that of neutrality. “I met one of them in a bar. I managed to dissuade the louts from joining in, but I doubt the one I met is the only one.”

“You _met_ him?” Valjean’s eyes widen. “Javert—”

“Don’t fret; I wasn’t recognised,” he said, waving towards his clothes vaguely. “But, look, we’re already outnumbered, especially if Thénardier’s lot managed to gather more people. So I need the letter.”

“What for? I don’t understand.”

If he told Valjean now, the man would surely stop him. Javert simply gave him a dark smile, full of too many teeth. “If you give it to me, I’ll show you.”

Valjean met his gaze for a moment, unflinching, before he nodded. He went into the bedroom, returning to the crumpled piece of paper when he returned, handing it over. Javert studied the weight of the paper – cheap, unlined – before he stared at the handwriting.

This should be doable.

He went into the kitchen, picking up a piece of paper and a pen from the hall. Sitting down on the chair, he weighed the letter down and, keeping his eyes on it, began to write.

“Are you copying it out?” Valjean asked.

Javert didn’t answer.

_My dear Baron_ , he wrote carefully, stifling the usual motions of his hand and keeping a keen eye on the letter.

_I would like to first congratulate you on your upcoming marriage. Your future bride is beautiful. I have heard, too, that M. Fauchelevent is a kindly man, especially saint-like in his twilight years._

_You would not like anything to happen to them, would you?_

_Do not think terribly of me, Monsieur. Recently, I have fallen on hard times. This is a petition for aid, nothing more. Surely a man like you has some money to spare? Fifty thousand francs, perhaps?_

_I eagerly await your answer._

_Hopefully,  
M. Jondrette_

He signed the man with a flourish that was fitting to the looping, cursive writing that he suspected to be Montparnasse. When he finished, he blew on the ink to dry it. Then he crumpled it, and smoothed it out again.

“Tomorrow morning,” he told Valjean, “take this to the Palais de Justice.”

Valjean was staring at him, eyes wide. “Javert,” he choked out. “What are you _doing_?”

“There’s no way that I can take on the numbers that Thénardier can gather, not even with you and Pontmercy fighting,” he stated, shrugging; shoving down the itching sensation beneath his skin, stifling the policeman screaming in rage in his mind. “I need help. _We_ need the police’s help. I’m making sure that we get it without incriminating either you or Pontmercy.”

Silence. Javert sighed.

“Look, I know that you are reluctant to call the police’s attention to anything,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the chair. “But the law is made to serve men like Ultime Fauchelevent,” hapless civilians without criminal records, “and I’m sure your papers would hold up well enough under a cursory scan.” 

His lips curved into a smirk. “They held up well enough this morning. And when Pontmercy transferred ownership of me to you.”

Slowly, Valjean shook his head. He snatched the paper out of Javert’s hand, staring at it with a gaze nearly bright enough to set it on fire. Then he looked up to Javert again, leaning in while his eyes darted from side to side.

“You’re _falsifying evidence_ ,” he hissed. “Tell me you understand that, at least?”

“Of course I do,” Javert replied blandly. How could he not? He knew that he would be consciously choosing to break the law the moment that the idea came to him. But he had chosen to do so anyway.

“If you’re caught…” Valjean bit his lip.

Javert threw his head back and laughed. “I’m already a criminal, Valjean,” he said. “I broke the law in the most egregious way possible. I have sinned even while thinking I was righteous. What is the weight of another sin?”

“That’s not…” Valjean shook his head again, his eyes resting on the letter. “Javert, you can’t… what if you get caught? What if the police showed Thénardier this letter and he denied having written it? What if he told the police that he wrote something else entirely?”

“It will be your word against his,” Javert pointed out. “And the law doesn’t listen to captured criminals, especially when an honest citizen gives a conflicting testimony.”

Blood on cobblestones. Blood on pillow. Closed eyes and a too-still body with grief-etched skin. He squeezed his eyes shut, hands digging into the edge of the table. Irony was bitter on his tongue, filling his mouth – she had been honest, but now Javert was lying. Lying and falsifying evidence for the sake of… for the sake of what?

He didn’t think himself selfless enough to wish to protect Valjean and the others, but what other reason was there?

“Javert?” Valjean rested both hands on his shoulders, the weight of them reassuring and strange both, just enough to pull him out of his stupor. He blinked.

“I didn’t realise that happened anymore,” Valjean said, worry clear in his eyes.

Javert cleared his throat. “Less often,” he admitted. Then he waved a hand, “But that’s another reason why you need police backup. What if I blank out when Thénardier comes? I won’t be able to fight.”

“I don’t want you to put yourself at risk for my sake,” Valjean told him quietly.

“Damn it,” Javert swore, standing up. He resisted the urge to bang on the table, instead dragging a hand through his hair. “Alright. Let me put it in terms you would understand: you’re doing _me_ a favour with this, because if you die, there is _no way_ that I would escape execution.”

“What—”

“Second degree murder isn’t a terrible enough crime to send someone to the chair,” Javert said brusquely. “Not even if there are multiple charges of prison assault added to it. The list is enough to justify sending me to the auction house because I proved a risk to prison security, but if no one ends up buying me, then I would be proven to be too dangerous to let live and not useful enough for society. I’d be sent for execution.”

He sighed against, scrubbing at his mouth. “Pontmercy bought me for information about you and to get me to _find_ you,” he said, repeating what he had already told Valjean. “But if he hadn’t given me to you, I’d probably be dead by now.”

Valjean was wincing every single time Javert spoke of his current status as property, his knuckles turning whiter and whiter with every word. But Javert ignored it, pressing on.

“If I put it that I want you to take this damned thing to the Palais and get proper backup for my own sake, will you do it? Will that rid you of that stupid martyr complex of yours?”

“It’s not- I only-” Valjean stopped, rubbing a hand over his scalp. “You know what happens if a- if a slave is caught committing another crime, Javert. Any other crime.”

Javert closed his eyes, anger draining out of him before he dropped back to the chair. “There’s no way out of this without risks,” he said tiredly. “And this is the option with the lowest possibility.”

“Still too high,” Valjean said. He looked frustrated. “I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I wish you were still part of the police.”

“You’re not the only one,” Javert told him wryly. “Trust me on that.”

This would be so much easier to resolve if he still had his badge. But then again, if he still had his badge, if he didn’t have this collar on, he wouldn’t even be sitting in Valjean’s kitchen, much less having this conversation. In fact, Valjean would likely be the one collared and chained.

_No,_ Javert realised. No. Even if the alleyway hadn’t happened, Javert still wouldn’t have arrested him. Wasn’t that what he was heading to the Seine to prevent?

The sound of wood dragging against tiles rang out. Javert watched blankly as Valjean pulled a chair over, dropping to sit next to him to take Javert’s hands in his again. 

“I do, you know,” Valjean said quietly. “Trust you.”

Javert stopped breathing.

“If you think that doing this will result in the safety of us all, then I trust your judgment.” Those dark eyes turned to meet his, and Valjean crooked a small smile. “I’ll take this to the Palais tomorrow.”

He should be relieved that Valjean was finally giving in to reason, Javert knew. But he couldn’t even find it within himself to, not when his head was spinning like this. He opened his mouth, but no words escaped.

“You’re a good man, Javert. No matter that you think otherwise.”

“I just committed a crime right in front of you,” Javert miraculously found his voice. He swallowed. “And you still think that?”

“Of course I do,” Valjean’s smile widened. His thumb stroked over Javert’s knuckles. “Even if you’re not saying it, I know that you’ve chosen to do this to protect Marius, Cosette and myself.”

“I killed a man.”

“To protect a helpless girl.”

Valjean smiled at the startled look Javert gave him. “You’re not the only one who spoke to Azelma, you know.”

Javert’s hands shook. The law condemned him for what he had done, and it was righteous in doing so. If the law condemned him for falsifying evidence to aid and abet two men who should be behind bars, then it would be righteous too. And surely, _surely_ , if the law condemned Thénardier for all that he had done – all the people he had cheated, all the children he had hurt, all those he had made fear him – then it would be right as well? If it wasn’t, then why would Valjean agree for him to be arrested?

But what did the law know? 

If the law knew nothing, then why couldn’t he abandon it? Why did he return to it, over and over, like a dog chewing on a bone scraped clean?

His gaze fell onto Valjean’s hands, still wrapped around his own. Slowly, Javert found himself bowing, body bent into half over those hands that had given him so much undeserved mercy, feeling their warmth against his skin.

“The law was wrong to have condemned you. And you said that it was wrong to condemn me. But surely it won’t be wrong to condemn Thénardier? I…” Javert took a deep breath, shuddering. “You once said that you will be my judge, Valjean. Be my judge. Tell me what is _right_.”

_Please_.

“I can’t tell you what is right,” Valjean said gently. “But I think… there is need for law. It protects the innocents; it restricts the vile behaviours of men. It wasn’t wrong to have condemned me for theft, for I was guilty of it. You know best out of anyone that I wasn’t always the man I am now. But, Javert…

“The law is a cold, dead thing. It is a tool to be wielded. It is as righteous or unrighteous as a truncheon, or a gun, because one cannot ascribe such qualities to a tool. We can only judge the hands of men who moulded it; the men who wield it.”

Javert’s breath hitched. The slightest touch of lips brushed over his temple.

“You’ve wielded it fairly throughout your life, Javert. I realised that long ago, back in Montreuil-sur-Mer, when you came to me to beg for your dismissal. You’ve placed its knife as close to your own throat as you did to anyone else you have ever arrested. That’s what made you a good man, an honest man.”

_We’re both captives of the law_. A brief thought from long ago came to haunt him once more. Javert’s breathing turned even more ragged.

“I haven’t changed my mind about that, you know. I still think the same. I’m even more convinced, in fact. Haven’t you realised, Javert? You’ve learned mercy. You’ve learned to give it to others, even though you don’t seem capable of giving it to yourself.”

Those hands caught around his own, squeezing his fingers lightly.

“Will you lift your head?”

Slowly, Javert tried. Valjean was looking at him, eyes softly dark, and Javert found himself sliding out of the chair, falling onto his knees. He gripped those hands even tighter, pressing them hard against his own forehead.

“You’re wrong,” he said hoarsely. “It was wrong for you to have been condemned. You were guilty of theft, but… but you did it to save the life of your sister’s child.” _  
_  
She was guilty of hitting that man, but it was for her own protection. She was guilty of prostitution, but it was in desperation to save her child.

Valjean dropped to his knees as well, and those lips pressed against his temple. “I do not deserve the mercy you grant me,” he murmured. “But, Javert… do not hold the knife so close to your throat when you have removed it from mine. Do you not realise? You are guilty of killing a man, but did you not do it for the sake of protecting Azelma?”

_I was only trying to make him stop,_ Javert started to shake his head. But he realised he had been thwarting himself from finishing that sentence: _… make him stop hurting her_.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Rust-metal in his nose. He swayed.

“Is that mercy?” he heard himself ask. “To look upon the intentions of a crime?”

Strong arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him close. Javert clutched at Valjean’s shoulders, at his back, clinging onto the one anchor that was left in his shattered world.

He pressed another kiss to Javert’s temple. “And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed,” Valjean quoted quietly. “Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.

“We have taken the codes from history, but we have forgotten the reasons behind them,” Intentions and circumstances, Javert. Is that not the reason why there are different degrees to murder in the first place?”

Gently, he brushed his thumb on the skin right above Javert’s collar.

_Unfair_ , Azelma had said. _Unfair_.

Javert didn’t understand it then. But like the sun breaking through the clouds, Valjean had made him see:

His trial was a farce, and he had added onto it. He had perjured against himself by pleading guilty to a crime he didn’t commit.

He started to laugh, low and bitter and half-mad, trembling with every breath. But Valjean didn’t pull away, didn’t speak, merely held him as his head swam at the thought that the law, the very law he had obeyed for so long, had committed injustice against him; that he had, in his haste to obey, broken the tool he had worshipped for so long.

What did the law know? Nothing. It knew nothing. It could know nothing because it was a series of codes, letters made by men who looked upon only crimes and not the men who committed them.

There was nothing left of Javert. Nothing whatsoever, except.

Except for Valjean’s light around him, nearly bright enough to sear; Valjean’s arms around him, holding him together even as the world shattered-splintered once more; Valjean’s hands and grace and mercy, offering him stones unfamiliar in shape and texture, to build a new world. 

Valjean. 

Javert would never be free of this man.

But he knew now that he didn’t want to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … I know how obvious the conclusion seems to the audience. But a world having shades of grey is a _massive_ revelation for Javert. Sob.
> 
> Also, I think I’m perfectly justified with that Javert/Valjean tag for that fic after this chapter. I’m not trying to tease you, I swear, but this is the furthest both of them can go right now.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert makes a police report with his Master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **Book II Chapter Three: Approaching Tides**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** … Nothing again. This is mostly build-up. (I kind of want to warn for… I don’t know, ‘depiction of an officer of law who is a good man but not a perfect one’? Something like that? Or ‘depiction of a character far beyond what is usually explored’? But this whole fic is partly about the complicated nature of people, so…)

The main office of the Palais de Justice was as busy as it usually was, filled with officers milling around. Javert looked at them, expecting and dismissing the ache he felt to join them, and steadied his straight-backed position, three steps behind Valjean.

One of the men – an Inspector, Second Class, given his uniform – turned. He opened his mouth, and it remained open as he recognised Javert. Slowly, like the coming in of the tide, more and more officers took notice, and all eyes – from _gendarme_ to inspectors to even the _commissionaires_ and the civilians – turned towards him. 

Javert met their gazes squarely, scanning from one side of the room to the other, head held high enough to make the collar and chain at his neck obvious.

No one moved. By his side, Valjean had the look of a deer in the headlights as those eyes slowly shifted from Javert to him.

“M. Fauchelevent has a crime to report,” Javert said. The sound of his voice was like a gunshot in the silent room.

“Are all of you waiting for a slave to give you orders?” a voice said, low and amused. “Get back to work, all of you.”

The man who spoke stood at the very back of the room. His posture was relaxed, his eyes calm as he met Javert’s. The weight of those stares had lifted the moment he spoke.

By instinct, Javert lowered his head, and remained so as the man approached. 

“Monsieur le Secrétaire,” he murmured when M. Chabouillet came close enough to hear him.

“A crime to report from the M. Fauchelevent, is it?” Chabouillet said, voice light. “Come on in to my office then.”

“It’s surely not important enough a matter for the Secretary of the Prefect himself,” Valjean protested.

“I beg to differ, Monsieur,” M. Chabouillet said. He didn’t elaborate, merely turned his back and strode across the room. The officers parted instantly as he walked, and even Valjean seemed helpless but to follow.

The moment the door closed behind them, M. Chabouillet motioned Valjean to a seat. As Valjean sat down, Javert folded his legs beneath him, sinking to kneel on the ground with his eyes cast down and his hands in full view on his lap. The picture perfect posture of a slave.

He hadn’t expected M. Chabouillet to be here. The Secretary of the Prefect usually had too little time to spare for the main offices Palais of Justice. This might… complicate things. 

There was silence for a moment before Valjean cleared his throat. “Javert, take the other chair,” he said.

Javert nodded, standing back up. He walked over to the chair and sat down, still keeping his eyes lowered.

“Forgive me, M. Fauchelevent,” M. Chabouillet said. Then, before Javert could register what was happening, there was the sound of quick footsteps, and a pair of arms around him.

He stood there, frozen and completely still, as his patron, his _superior officer_ , embraced him so tightly that he could barely breathe.

“You _idiot_ ,” M. Chabouillet muttered. “Christ in Heaven, Javert. You complete _idiot_. Of all the things you could have done, you pleaded guilty. _Why_?”

What?

“It was just. It was deserved.” The words came too easily still.

M. Chabouillet pulled away, light hazel eyes scanning his face. After a moment, he sighed deeply, rubbing his hand over his greying beard.

“Did _I_ deserve having one of my best officers taken from me? And in such a way, in fact?”

“I,” Javert blinked. “You flatter me, Monsieur.”

“Exactitude of service,” M. Chabouillet stated flatly. “That was how you were recommended to me, and you’ve proved it true over and over the years, Javert. I don’t flatter.” He cocked his head, eyes narrowing. “You look well, at least.”

Before Javert could think of a retort or anything else to say, M. Chabouillet was already standing. He turned towards Valjean and, of all things, bowed to him.

The look on Valjean’s face was almost amusing: eyes wide, mouth open, hands clenched on the armrests of the chair and body poised to rise.

“Thank you for taking care of my subordinate, M. Fauchelevent,” M. Chabouillet said. “I am deeply grateful.”

“I-” Valjean floundered. He opened his mouth and closed it, resembling a fish. “It was no trouble at all,” he said weakly.

“Monsieur le Secrétaire,” Javert said, unable to help himself. “Please, I am no longer your subordinate. As you said, I am now nothing but a slave.”

M. Chabouillet turned to look at him. “That’s-” he began, then shook his head, face twisting into a ferocious scowl. He walked behind his desk and sat on his chair heavily. “We’ll speak about my reasons for that later,” he said, eyes fixed upon the door of the office. 

“M. Fauchelevent, you said that you had a crime to report?”

“Yes,” Valjean said, clearly relieved to have the subject turned back towards something he knew; a sentiment Javert shared.

He drew out the fake letter from his pocket. “My daughter’s fiancé received this two days ago,” he said. “It’s clearly a threat.”

“Two days!” M. Chabouillet exclaimed, practically snatching the letter from Valjean’s hands. “Why on Earth did you wait so long?”

Valjean looked helplessly at Javert, and Javert sighed.

“I convinced him that I could deal with it, Monsieur,” he admitted. “But I realised that I was being arrogant.”

M. Chabouillet frowned at him before turning his attention back to the letter. Javert held his breath. If there was anyone who could spot a discrepancy in the handwriting, anyone who would even suspect the possibility that the letter was false evidence, then it was this man. He tried to keep his shoulders loose and his hands open at his side.

“Jondrette,” the Secretary said finally. “The last we had heard of him, he was robbing the dead during the June Riots.” His lips twisted in a clear expression of distaste. “So he’s surfaced again. This man is like a bad penny.”

“Javert told me that this man’s real name is likely to be Thénardier, Monsieur,” Valjean offered hesitantly.

“Yes,” M. Chabouillet nodded, folded the letter and placing it back onto the desk. “He’s usually found running with four other men at his command. They call themselves the Patron-Minette. We have been trying to capture them for years.”

“So you will take up the case?” Valjean said, sounding hopeful.

M. Chabouillet nodded. “Yes, Monsieur.” He paused, then laughed lightly. “In fact, I believe you have done me another favour. It has been a long time since we have any confirmations of the whereabouts of the Patron-Minette, and I will dearly like to see them all behind bars.”

Valjean nodded, looking slightly stunned. M. Chabouillet smiled at him before turning to Javert.

“Do you have any further information?”

Javert nodded. “I saw them trying to recruit more men,” he told M. Chabouillet. “The agent I saw was Montparnasse, and he was unsuccessful. On further prompting he revealed that his true target is,” he hesitated before pressing forward, “M. Fauchelevent here rather than Baron Pontmercy.”

Hazel eyes narrowed. “How did you find out all of this?” he demanded.

“I went undercover, Monsieur,” Javert replied. He reached out and tapped the air above his collar, careful to not touch it. “This is the tracking model.”

“Are you mad? You could’ve been killed!” He whirled towards Valjean. “How could you allow him to do such a thing?”

Valjean blinked. Then his shoulders shook with silent chuckles. “Monsieur le Secrétaire,” he said, shaking his head. “Have _you_ ever succeeded in convincing Javert against doing something he has set his mind to? I certainly haven’t.”

 _You have_. _You convinced me to not kill myself_.

He swallowed hard, shoving back the words. They were completely inappropriate right now. But- did Valjean not know? Did he not _see_?

M. Chabouillet stared at Valjean for a moment before he threw his head back and laughed, hearty and loud. “You speak the truth, Monsieur,” he gasped out. “Very true indeed.”

Standing up, he walked over to Valjean, sticking out a hand. “Leave your address with one of the officers outside, Monsieur. I’ll send men over tonight.”

Valjean took the hand hesitantly, shaking it. “Will you… Is it too much to ask for men to be sent to Marius’s house as well, Monsieur? My daughter now lives there and is preparing for her wedding.”

“That will be no trouble,” the Secretary nodded.

“Monsieur,” Javert heard himself speak. “There is one more who might need protection.”

“Oh?” An eyebrow rose.

Javert took a deep breath. “Yes. A young woman named Azelma Thénardier.”

The other brow joined its brother. M. Chabouillet crossed his arms, leaning back against his desk. “Why would she be in danger?” he asked, voice carefully neutral.

“Thénardier,” he paused. “Jondrette heard somehow that she was in contact with me. And he is… he is violent towards her, Monsieur. She fears him.”

M. Chabouillet didn’t speak, a thoughtful frown on his face.

“There are two young boys who live with her,” Javert tried again. “Her brothers.”

“Thénardier’s sons?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

There was a moment of silence before M. Chabouillet sighed, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. “I do not like interfering in a man’s affairs with his children,” he said slowly. “But there is merit in posting guard at her door. If Thénardier reappears, then we can follow him and find his whereabouts.”

That was not… no, Javert should not take too many liberties. He nodded instead, casting his eyes down. “Thank you, Monsieur,” he murmured.

“Leave her address with the officer as well,” M. Chabouillet nodded. “Afterwards, I suggest that you continue with your day as per your usual schedule, M. Fauchelevent. We would not wish to arouse suspicion.”

He dropped back to his seat, leaning back in obvious dismissal. 

Valjean nodded, standing as well. “Javert?” he turned to him.

Javert took the chain from where it had been dangling towards the ground, links pooling it in his hand before he held it out to Valjean. Valjean’s lips thinned at little at the sight of it, but he picked it up, and Javert fell back three steps behind him again.

M. Chabouillet’s eyes followed them as they left.

***

“You should have taken up Clarisse’s offer,” Javert repeated once more, his voice a low hiss as he walked behind Valjean back to the house on Rue Plumet. “There is no harm having more men for backup.”

They had taken M. Chabouillet’s advice and continued with their regular schedule – that was, they visited the Saint-Germain Mission Shelter, with Javert giving out bread while Valjean ladled soup and spoke softly to those who came. Clarisse had taken them to the side before their tasks began, and told them that she heard from Azelma that they were under threat from Thénardier, her father. The woman had offered her aid and the aid of the other volunteers as well.

“It’s the least we can do after all you’ve done for us, Monsieur,” she had said, earnestness bright in her eyes. “There are strong men here, good men who can be useful.”

But Valjean had refused her, over and over, and not even Javert’s intervention could convince him to do otherwise.

“I don’t want any of your lives to be risked for my sake,” he had said, constantly shaking his head. “Whatever I have done surely isn’t worth that.”

“Just for one night,” Javert persisted now. “Only one night. We can send them away when the officers sent by Monsieur le Secrétaire come.”

Valjean looked at him for a moment before he sighed, tapping in the passcode for the gate. “No, Javert,” he said. “I’m not going to.”

“Then call Frey,” Javert switched tracks, feeling his own frustration growing. “Tell him about what is going on. He’ll know how to handle himself, at least?”

“Mathieu is a schoolteacher,” Valjean said, shaking his head once more. “I doubt that he knows how to fight.”

“It’ll at least be one extra man!” Javert snarled, barely able to keep his voice down as he pulled the gate shut behind him. “It might deter Thénardier and his gang from attacking if there were three men instead of two!”

“No,” Valjean said, jaw stubbornly set.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Javert scrubbed at his mouth again. It was infuriating, the way Valjean refused to see _sense_ regarding this matter: he might have the strength of four men, but what was strength in the face of guns and knives?

“You should…” Valjean said, hesitating at the doorway. “You should leave for the night, Javert. Go stay with Azelma, or even Frey. It’ll be safer than this place.”

Javert stared at him for a moment before he let out a sound like a growl. “I will not,” he snapped out. When Valjean opened his mouth, Javert held out a hand, stopping him.

“There is no way you can convince me to leave you now, Valjean,” he said. “I suggest you save your breath.”

Valjean’s eyes rested on him for a moment before he chuckled. “And there is no way you can convince me to bring even more lives into danger,” he said. “So I, too, suggest that you—”

He was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps and a muffled voice: “Papa? Papa, is that you?”

The door flew open, and Cosette immediately leapt into her father’s arms. Javert took two steps to the side immediately so he wouldn’t be bowled over as Valjean caught his daughter, arms wrapping around her shoulders even as his eyes widened.

“Cosette? What are you doing here?”

“Marius told me what is happening!” Cosette said, low and breathless. She pulled away, cupping Valjean’s cheeks as dark eyes scanned his face. “I was worried, so very worried, that something had happened to you, Papa! I’m so glad you’re safe!”

Valjean floundered slightly as Cosette squeezed her arms even tighter around him, practically clinging to him with her feet half-lifted from the ground. Javert’s lips twitched, and he turned to see Pontmercy standing at the doorway.

“She insisted on coming, M. Jean,” the boy said, sounding sheepish and guilty.

“And you were wise enough to not try to stop me!” Cosette huffed, not even looking at her fiancé with her eyes fixed on her father. “I wouldn’t be able to rest at all if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes that Papa is safe!”

“I,” Valjean began. He shook his head. “I’m alright, Cosette. But you shouldn’t have come. It’s dangerous to be here.”

Cosette blinked. “Isn’t it safer here? Aren’t those terrible men heading for Marius’s house instead?”

Javert cursed himself. With all the revelations the last night, he had completely forgotten to call Pontmercy to update him about the updated situation and the Patron-Minette’s true target.

“We should go inside,” he said finally. “Lingering here at the door is a bad choice.”

Pontmercy looked at him, wide-eyed, for a moment before he nodded. “M. Javert is right, Cosette,” he said, reaching out to close a gentle hand around her arm. “Come on inside.”

“You can interrogate your father inside the house as well as in the doorway,” Javert added helpfully.

Cosette looked at him for a moment before she giggled, a light sound that broke through the heavy tension hanging around the three men. She nodded, untangling herself from Valjean before she took several steps back, half-dragging her father inside. Javert followed him, throwing one glance back to the gate to make sure that there were no shadows there.

“Now, Papa, you _must_ tell me,” Cosette said, looking into Valjean’s eyes. “Why is your house dangerous?”

Valjean opened his mouth and closed it. He looked helpless and torn in that moment, his eyes darting from Marius to Cosette before resting on Javert himself, practically pleading.

Javert sighed. “The men’s real target isn’t Pontmercy’s money, but your father’s,” he said, glaring at Valjean. “The letter being sent to Pontmercy is more likely to have been a ruse than anything else.”

He paused. “In fact, I think that the two of you might have fallen straight into their trap. They were likely expecting you to have come to the conclusions that you have, and to head straight for this place, thinking it safer.”

“Javert!” Valjean yelped, sounding horrified. So the man _had_ come to the same conclusions as well.

Cosette was staring at him now, her hands covering her mouth and her eyes wide behind her glasses. “Oh,” she said quietly. “Oh, I… Oh, Papa! I’m so sorry! I wanted to make sure that you’re safe, and instead I have… I have…”

She buried her face in her hands. Valjean was immediately at her side, drawing her close into an embrace. His glare at Javert was fierce and sharp even as he stroked her hair. 

“It’s alright, dear girl,” he murmured. “It’s alright.”

“Even if they come, the police will be here tonight,” Javert told them in a weak attempt at reassurance. “All of you will be safe.”

“The police?” This time, it was Pontmercy who had the wide, horror-struck eyes. “Monsieur, surely you…”

Javert looked at him. He glanced at the tableau of father and daughter holding and comforting each other before he nodded to himself.

“Come with me,” he told the boy. Pontmercy followed him into the kitchens, his footsteps sounding uncertain on the floorboards. Absentmindedly, Javert draped his chain over his shoulders, securing the end of it by tucking it into the collar of his shirt.

Pulling open the cutlery drawer, Javert took out the letter he had hidden there last night. He handed it over to Pontmercy, who took it like he would a bomb, and watched a multitude of emotions cross the boy’s face as he realised that it was precisely the same one he had received.

After a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t understand, Monsieur. You said…”

“I know what I said,” Javert sighed, impatiently cutting him off. “We handed another letter to the police; one that would drive them into action without looking too closely at the men under threat.”

Pontmercy blinked. “Thénardier sent another letter?”

“No.”

Javert waited. He watched as Pontmercy read over the letter in his hands again, a furrow appearing between his brows. Like the rising of the tides, comprehension began to dawn on his face. His eyes lifted to meet Javert’s, and his mouth fell open.

“You… you falsified a letter, Monsieur?” he was gaping like a fish, choking out the words. “ _You_?”

“Look,” Javert said, dragging a hand through his hair. “There was no other way. If Thénardier comes alone, he is likely to come armed. And I know he isn’t, and that any other men he brings him will be armed as well.” 

Pontmercy shook his head hard. “That’s not… I was at the barricades, Monsieur; I understand that at times the law must be broken in order to do what is right. It’s only… It’s only that it’s _you_.”

He waved a hand, a motion more like a seizing twitch rather than anything meaningful, seeming unable to further clarify himself.

But Javert knew what he meant. His lips quirked into a wry smile. “Let’s just say that I have had a few lessons regarding righteousness,” he said.

The understatement of the year, perhaps.

“You…” Pontmercy’s hand groped for a chair, found it, and he dropped down to sit with a heavy exhale. He rubbed a hand over his face, then harder over his full beard, looking confused.

“Monsieur, you _never_ cease to surprise me.”

Javert had no idea whatsoever how to respond to that. So he only shrugged. Pontmercy opened his mouth, likely to further his point, but he was thankfully interrupted.

“Marius! Marius, you have to help me!”

Cosette entered the kitchens, practically towing her father behind her. She didn’t let go of Valjean even as she grabbed Pontmercy’s hand, gripping it tight.

“Papa is trying to convince me that we should go back home and leave him and M. Javert here,” she said. “But I won’t, Marius! If you’re here, then perhaps you can help if those detestable men come.”

Valjean’s face was a mixture of fondness, exasperation, and deep-seated worry that seemed etched into the lines at the edges of his eyes. “Cosette,” he tried.

“No, Papa!” Cosette whirled around, shaking her head hard enough that her curls smacked against her face. “I won’t have you send us away. You tried doing that once, and never again.” She took a deep breath and repeated it, fiercer:

“Never again!”

Pontmercy looked torn, eyes darting between his fiancée and his future father-in-law. He rubbed his hand over his beard again. “Perhaps _you_ can return,” he began.

Cosette’s eyes widened at him, and she bit her lip. “You will have me go back. Go back there, to _safety_ , while all the men I love are here in danger!” Tears began to well up on her face, and she pulled her glasses off violently, wiping at her eyes. “I won’t have it! I won’t!”

Valjean sighed. He gave Javert a helpless look, as if saying, _See, this is the reason why I didn’t want to tell her_.

Javert looked at the three of them: the father determined to fight alone, the boy torn between love and respect, and the girl wanting to do everything she could.

How did he end up caught up in this?

“Cosette,” he said finally. “Hit me.”

All three pairs of eyes turned to him, but it was Cosette who found her voice first. “What?”

“If you want to help,” Javert said slowly. “Try to hit me now.”

Glancing uncertainly between the two men of her life, Cosette bit her lip. Then she seemed to come to a decision, nodding. She took a step forward.

“Javert, what are you doing?” Valjean asked, a hint of danger in his voice.

Ignoring him, Javert watched the girl. Her every step was hesitant, and when her fist swung, it was so slow that it didn’t take him any effort to catch her wrist.

“Not like that.” His other hand laid over hers, uncurling the fingers. Slowly, his eyes on hers, he manoeuvred her until the heel of her hand was thrust upwards an inch away from his face. “Like that. Aim for the chin.”

Cosette took a deep breath. She tried again. This time, Javert caught her by the elbow.

“Don’t swing from your elbow,” he told her. “Use your entire body. Take a step back now – with one foot, yes – and push your shoulder back. When you try to hit me, you take that step forward and _push_ as hard as you can from your shoulder. Concentrate the entirety of your body to the heel of your hand.”

Her eyes were still uncertain, but there was a growing determination there. Pontmercy and Valjean were utterly silent, eyes fixed upon Cosette as she nodded to herself.

When the hit came, it was fast and hard enough that Javert was forced to take a step backwards, his teeth clicking together.

“Not bad,” he said, lips curling upwards.

“Javert,” Valjean said again, the danger even more evident now. “What _are_ you doing?”

“I’m tired of hearing the three of you argue,” Javert answered, not bothering to look at him. “You’re not going to convince her to leave. So if she’s staying, then she might as well learn a few ways to not be a liability.”

Cosette set her jaw, turning to her father. “M. Javert is right,” she said, hands clenched into fists by her side. “I’m not going to leave, Papa. But I’m not… I’m not letting you be in danger because of me either.”

She glanced at Javert. “Any of you.”

“I…” Valjean shook his head. “This is a terrible idea.”

“If you have a better one, I’m all ears,” Javert rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you and Pontmercy think it over while Cosette and I do something actually useful?”

The girl giggled, a hand covering her mouth. She looked at Javert, and in that moment, with her eyes so bright and her smile lighting up her entire face, he understood just why Valjean would give his life to protect this slip of a girl. He even understood why Pontmercy would be idiotic enough to think his life to be worth losing if he couldn’t see her again.

(Of course he knew about that. The boy was practically bemoaning it every other second at the barricades.)

Strangling the thought before he could think of who else had given everything for this girl, he folded his arms, leaning back against the kitchen counter.

“Always use the heel of your hand, your elbow, your knee,” he glanced down, “or your heel. You don’t have much strength, Cosette, but there are always places in a man that are vulnerable, no matter how strong he is.” 

He ticked off his fingers as he listed, “Nose, chin, sternum, foot.” His smile grew a little sharper. “The groin.”

Predictably, she blushed. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Cosette,” this time it was Pontmercy who spoke. “Are you- are you _sure_ you want to do this?”

“Yes, Marius,” she said, not looking at him. Her eyes were on Javert. “I… I am very glad that you and Papa wish to protect me, but I don’t… I don’t want to be protected all the time. I don’t want to be a liability, like M. Javert said.”

She took a deep breath and turned to the two men with a hesitant smile. “Even if I can’t fight now, I still want to help.”

Slowly, Pontmercy nodded. Valjean looked as if he was going to protest again, but with the loss of his ally, he merely sighed, rubbing his hand over his scalp. He dragged a chair out and dropped onto it with such an air of frustration that it almost made Javert laugh.

“Alright,” he said. “What will you do, Cosette, if a man grabs you from behind?”

Cosette blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not going to always be lucky enough that your attackers will be approaching from your front,” he pointed out.

She hesitated for a moment, scrunching her face up in thought. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Try not to have a fit,” he told the two men. Then, with a slowness more for Pontmercy and Valjean’s sake than Cosette’s, he walked over to the girl. He grabbed her by the elbow, making her yelp, and pulled his arm over her neck, dragging her back to his chest.

Valjean half-rose in his seat immediately, but Cosette’s reaction was even faster. Her heel slammed down somewhere left of his foot, and her elbow slammed into his ribs.

“Not good enough. Try again.”

There was a moment’s pause. Then Cosette seemed to steel herself. The next thing Javert knew, he was letting her go, stumbling backwards with his hand on his nose from the force of her head smacking against it.

“Ow.”

“I’m sorry! I- M. Javert, are you alright?”

Javert opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, he heard a sound that was becoming familiar: a low, choked wheeze.

He turned. Valjean had bent over, forehead on the table, arm wrapped around his stomach as his shoulders shook. Javert scowled, rubbing at his nose, and Valjean glanced at him before he wheezed again.

“Your face,” he gasped out. “Good God, Javert. Your _face_. You looked so—” Words failed him, and he dropped back onto the table and wheezed again.

“Papa! It’s not funny!” Cosette cried, looking distressed. “I could’ve hurt him!”

“If you did, it’d be a point to your favour,” Javert said, trying to ignore the sound of Valjean’s laughter and the way Pontmercy was twitching as he tried to stifle his own mirth. He poked at his nose instead, making sure that it wasn’t injured.

“I didn’t teach you that.”

“You did,” Cosette blinked, looking surprised. “You said that a man’s nose is his weak point, Monsieur. And you were…” she shrugged helplessly. “You were tall enough.”

“You mean that my nose is level to the top of your head,” he finished for her dryly. Valjean wheezed again. “Good thinking.”

Cosette brightened at the praise. “Am I good at this, then?”

Javert dragged a hand over his hair. He glared at Valjean. “Will you stop that?” he barked.

“Sorry, sorry,” Valjean waved a hand. He made an obvious effort to stop, but only succeeded in wheezing again. That hand clapped over his mouth, but his shoulders were still shaking. 

“And you,” he turned to Pontmercy. “Will you stop twitching like that? If you want to laugh, then laugh _properly_. You look like you’re having a seizure.”

Pontmercy’s eyes widened the moment Javert’s attention turned to him. “Sorry!” he yelped. “I- Sorry!”

This time, Valjean wheezed so hard that he half-fell out of his chair. Javert rolled his eyes at him, which only seemed to set him off again hard enough that he rested his head on the arm of the chair.

“Idiots,” Javert sighed. He turned back to Cosette. “Now—”

He stopped, because her attention was obviously not on him. She was looking at her father with wide eyes. When she did turn to him, he wished she hadn’t, because she was smiling, something so small but still so full of joy that Javert had no idea how to describe it.

No one had ever looked at him that way before. No one had ever looked at him like they were indescribably happy that he existed and was in their life.

When she stepped forward, he was frozen, and couldn’t even begin to try to prevent her from wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “For making Papa so happy.”

All words, all thought, fled Javert at the moment. He wanted to protest, wanted to say that she was wrong. He had _ruined_ Valjean’s life. He had… her mother… he couldn’t even formulate in words what he had done to her. And yet here she was, thanking him.

There was something stuck in his throat. Was that his heart? Was it the branches of the long-dead wood that now curled so warm in his veins?

He turned away, unable to look at her. His eyes fell on Valjean. And he- he was smiling too, soft and gentle, and no, Javert didn’t deserve any of this. None of this at all.

Thundering knocks on the door.

All four of them moved immediately: the smile fell off Valjean’s face, and he was on his feet; Pontmercy was by Cosette’s side; Cosette’s eyes went wide, one foot shifting behind her.

She was a damned fast learner. Javert could almost be proud.

“Stay out of sight,” Javert barked at her. “You’re not nearly good enough at this to even try. If you’re grabbed, do what you did again, but _harder_.”

Cosette nodded, swallowing hard. Pontmercy’s hand came to her elbow, and she rested hers on top of his. They exchanged a glance.

“The two of you, stay here in the kitchens,” Javert ordered. He turned to Valjean. “Take this off me.”

He motioned towards the chain.

Valjean nodded, coming forward. He unhooked the thing, hesitating, and Javert practically snatched it off of his hands, wrapping it around his own with a length of it dangling.

“Stay behind me,” he told Valjean. “Keep your hands free. _Don’t_ do anything rash.”

A part of him was laughing hysterically at the thought of a slave giving orders to his master. But Valjean’s eyes were steady on his. He nodded.

Good.

Javert took a deep breath. The knocks came even louder. “C’mon,” Thénardier’s voice yelled out. “We know you’re in there!”

His hand tightened around the chain. Striding towards the door, he yanked it open.

Thénardier only had a moment to grin, all teeth, before Javert swung his hand hard. The heavy metal links of the chain smacked against the conniving bastard’s face, right across the cheek. Thénardier yelled, stumbling backwards, and Javert punched him using knuckles wrapped with metal.

Then he threw himself out towards him. Towards him, and the other four men right behind. 

He hooked his foot around the door and slammed it close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next update is on Friday please don't kill me.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The river comes for the slave Javert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Book II Chapter Four: Devouring River**
> 
> **Warnings:** Explicit depiction of violence and blood.

One against five were rubbish odds, Javert knew, and he was faced with them now: Thénardier supposedly unarmed at his eleven o’clock, Montparnasse brandishing a knife at his five, Claquesous at his three, Babet at his eight, and Brujon at his nine. They surrounded him, and they would not have the honour to take him on one by one.

So Javert moved before they could.

“Get him!”

He ducked underneath Brujon’s first punch, immediately shoving his chain-wrapped hand into his sternum. The brute yelped, knocked breathless, but Javert was already ducking, free hand on the grass as he dodged Montparnasse’s knife. It screeched against the ring of his collar, sending up sparks, and Javert gritted his teeth, jerking his head even as he elbowed Montparnasse in the throat, throwing out a leg to kick Babet at the knee.

They stumbled back, but the most overtly dangerous of the gang had always been Thénardier and Claquesous. And the latter was coming at him now, hand outstretched. Javert grabbed his wrist and pulled as hard as he could, sending the man off-balance before he stepped aside and let him fall against Thénardier.

Thénardier yelled something Javert couldn’t distinguish through the roaring blood in his ears, most likely cursing Claquesous for nearly nicking him with his now-naked blade.

This was what he was used to: this _brawling_ , all of them throwing punches and kicks, knives glinting sharp in moonlight. He missed the weight of his gun, the safety of it, but that wasn’t something he could linger on: not when Montparnasse was getting up again, lips drawn back in a bestial snarl that turned his face ugly.

Javert hit him on the nose with the heel of his hand. He made to grab Montparnasse by the shoulder, but he was yanked back by a great strength pulling at his hair. Blindly, he lashed out with the chain, feeling links slide over his skin before they smack straight into Brujon’s face. 

The man roared, enraged. He took a step forward, but then he was dragged backwards, collar biting into his throat. Valjean stood there, looking grim. Javert exchanged a glance with him before he ducked under Claquesous’s knife once more, feeling the chill of it skip past his cheek. Babet reached out towards him with both hands: Javert ducked beneath them, slamming his fist into the knee. As Babet stumbled, Javert slammed his knee straight into the man’s crotch.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brujon: face against the wall, Valjean’s much smaller and slimmer figure grabbing him by the hair and smacking his head against it in a steady rhythm.

_Click_. Javert threw himself down to the ground. 

“Fauchelevent!” he yelled. “Duck!”

A gunshot rang out. Heat skimmed past his face, splitting skin, spilling blood down his cheek. Pain burst like stars behind his eyes but Javert ignored it, immediately turning towards the source.

Thénardier. Javert threw himself bodily against him, chain-empty hand grabbing for the gun. Thénardier kept a tight grip on it, snarling as Javert dug thumbs between the bones of his wrist. 

Another shot. The sound of a high-pitched, ringing scream. Pain in his leg. The feel of bone snapping, like a twig with too much pressure on a single point. Heat, blood-warm, crawling down his shin. A distant roar; male, familiar; not his voice. 

Javert ignored it all, because now—

Now Thénardier was distracted. He grabbed the gun, dropping his chain, and turned it to the direction of the other shot and firing it. The sound of the vibrating air rang in his ears, mixed with Montparnasse’s yell, and Javert simply threw the gun in Valjean’s direction.

It was harder to fight with one dud leg, but God had given men two for a reason. He propelled himself on that good one, gritting his teeth as he leapt for Montparnasse and grabbed him by the shoulders. The man went down, his smaller body unable to take Javert’s full weight. The gun went off again, shooting a bullet up into the sky. Javert gripped onto a wrist and slammed his head forward, feeling it connect, hearing something crack. Montparnasse shrieked, and Javert took the pistol, turned the safety on, and smashed the metal across his temple.

“Freeze! All of you freeze! Or I’m going to shoot her!”

Javert, breathing hard, stopped. Montparnasse looked dazed beneath him, his eyes fixed to a point in the distance. His lips curled into a cruel smirk, and Javert turned, following his gaze.

Thénardier stood at the doorway of the house, his arm around Cosette’s shoulders. He had a gun pointed to her head. Valjean was three steps away from him, body frozen except for his heaving chest. Pontmercy was somewhere a little distance away, holding onto – of all bloody things – a broken broom that he was pressing against Babet’s throat. He was trembling, eyes wide at Cosette. Brujon was unconscious – likely Valjean’s work.

Montparnasse started to laugh, a long high-pitched cackle. “Now you’ve all gone and done it,” he snarled, words mangled by the obviously-broken nose and the blood drip-smearing down his face. “He’s going to kill her.”

“Now all of you, put down your weapons,” Thénardier said, smiling with the cruelty of a man who thought he had won. “Get on your knees.”

“Don’t,” Javert said, forcing the words out of his throat. Pain throbbed in his leg, his face, in his head. “Don’t do what he said.”

“Monsieur,” Pontmercy said, sounding as if he was in shock. “He has- he has _Cosette_.”

His hand was starting to slip from the broom. Javert drew his head back and _snarled_ at the boy.

“ _Don’t. Do. It._ ”

He turned to Valjean for aid. But Valjean wasn’t saying a word, didn’t seemed to have heard. He wasn’t moving at all, his eyes fixed upon the gun pointed to his daughter’s head. If not for the continuous expanding and contracting of his chest, Javert would’ve thought himself looking at a statue.

“I’ll do it, you know,” Thénardier said, his smile slipping in the face of defiance. “I’ll shoot!”

“Please don’t, Monsieur,” Cosette spoke up, her voice as tremulous as her body. “Please don’t. I know you’re a kind man. You… you… you used to give me candy, right? You used to sneak me little treats when Madame wasn’t… when she wasn’t looking?”

What the hell was she talking about, and why did Valjean look as if someone had shot him in the chest? No matter- whatever it was, Thénardier now looked uncertain, his hand trembling on the gun handle. 

“Monsieur, _please_ …” Cosette pleaded. “Please be kind…?”

There was no use in begging a man like that. Javert opened his mouth to tell her to save her breath, and closed it immediately.

He was looking at Cosette’s face. With the way she was shaking, it would be obvious to anyone that she was crying. But there were no tears.

There were no tears.

_Decoy_. _Distraction_. His policeman’s instincts kicked in right at the moment Thénardier’s gun slipped down from Cosette’s forehead. He watched as Cosette slammed her elbow back and her heel down. Thénardier yelped, and she smashed his face with the back of her head before she ran straight for Valjean.

He had no time to think – not about the pride he felt at how quickly she learned, not about the way Valjean snapped out of his catatonia just in time to catch his daughter. No time when he still had to deal with Montparnasse. He looked down at the man – he wasn’t laughing now, Javert thought with grim satisfaction. Raising the gun, he turned it around until he was holding it by the barrel, and crashed it right against the side of Montparnasse’s head.

Eyes rolled up, body slumped; Montparnasse fell unconscious.

Javert allowed himself a single breath. Then he turned, spinning the gun in his hand before he pointed it at Thénardier’s head.

The click of the safety was almost as loud as a gunshot in the sudden silence. “Now, M. Thénardier,” Javert said, slow and deliberate. “ _You_ freeze.”

Thénardier was halfway to grabbing Valjean, who had pushed Cosette behind himself with his teeth drawn back into a snarl. His eyes darted between Valjean and Javert himself before landing finally on Cosette. Even here, a slight distance away, Javert could see just how brightly the hatred burned.

“Fauchelevent,” he said. “Help Pontmercy with Babet.”

“You’re bleeding,” Valjean said. “I should—”

“I have a gun. He has a broom,” Javert jerked his head impatiently, not taking his eyes or the gun away from Thénardier. “Help Pontmercy.”

Footsteps – one set quick and even, the other lighter but slower. Javert took another breath, shoving the pain of his leg deep inside his mind before he pulled himself back to his feet. He spared one glance to Montparnasse – checking that he was definitely unconscious – before he stood up. Keeping his weight mostly on his uninjured leg – his right, he finally realised – he moved towards Thénardier.

“Hands up in the air,” he demanded.

Thénardier scowled, but obeyed.

He counted again in his head: Brujon and Montparnasse were both down for the count; Babet was being restrained by Valjean and Pontmercy; Thénardier was at the end of his gun. There was… his head was spinning.

“Clasquesous,” Javert said, the realisation slamming into him. “Where is Clasquesous?!”

As if on cue, Javert saw a shadow move. He threw out a hand, pointing. “Over there!”

He hadn’t needed to: there was already the _thud_ of a body falling to the ground, Pontmercy’s voice speaking something with an authority Javert had never heard. Then: Valjean’s voice, caught in a convict’s snarl as rapid footsteps echoed, mixed with the smack of flesh hitting flesh. Valjean’s voice again, words mangled until Javert could recognise nothing but _my daughter_ and _how dare you_ and _you’re lucky that I_ amidst a series of incoherence.

Javert wanted, terribly, to turn his head and watch Valjean’s strength in action. But he couldn’t: not now, when he had to keep his eyes and the gun on Thénardier to make sure that he didn’t do anything too funny.

_Too easy_ , he thought. This had been too easy. Were there any more of them?

“Cosette,” he swallowed. “Check the perimeter.” He paused, and realised that she probably wouldn’t understand the terminology – damn his spinning head. “Go to the gate and look out to see if there’s anyone else.”

“No,” Pontmercy tried to protest.

“I can do it,” Cosette said. There was the sound of her footsteps again. Then the quiet clinking of metal.

“There are…” she hesitated. “Cars along the road. I can’t see anyone.”

Wheels on tarmac. Javert narrowed his eyes, keeping them on Thénardier even as he forced his mind to work, to recognise. He knew those wheels. He knew the way they stopped. (Though- five cars? Why so many?) He wanted to open his mouth, to tell Cosette – whose footsteps he could tell to be rapidly retreating from the gate – that things would be alright now.

The police were here. 

_Finally_. With a good district like Saint-Germain, he thought they would have arrived faster.

His leg was throbbing.

“Messieurs,” said a _very_ familiar voice – what in nine hells was _M. Chabouillet_ doing here? “Would you please open the door?”

In that one moment, the world slowed. Javert watched, as if outside of himself, as Thénardier suddenly moved. He darted away from Javert’s gun, bending down, running… running towards his own gun that Javert had thrown to the ground and Valjean had- had not picked up. Slow and quick at the same time, he raised it.

Javert was moving even before he knew it, even before his mind processed just _who_ the gun would be pointing to. It didn’t matter. No matter who it was, it changed nothing.

“GET DOWN!”

Gunshots. Javert’s hands touched a body, something, and he shoved with all of the strength remaining in him. He turned just in time to feel the bullets slam into him – one, then two. Didn’t matter. He pressed the trigger and _fired_.

Just as his legs gave out under from him, he heard Thénardier cry out; saw him clap a hand over his chest as he collapsed.

“JAVERT!”

Fire. Fire in his chest.

He hit the ground hard against his shoulder. The impact made the bullets dig even deeper, widen the holes in his lungs further. Javert gasped. Metal bubbled in his throat, out of his mouth, staining the grass with red.

“Marius! Marius, take off your jacket! Press it to his wounds, now!” Cosette sounded both terrified and frantic. What was she so worried about? They were all fine; they weren’t injured.

God, his cheek ached. The blood there was drying, and every breath tugged on the tiny cut.

Hands scrabbling at his shoulders. The gun fell out of his nerveless hands and someone took them. _Safety_ , he tried to remind, but no words came out; only more metal, stinking of rust.

“You saved my life,” Pontmercy said, sounding dazed. Heavy cloth pressed against his chest, making him more aware of it, and Javert jerked as pain sliced through the darkness trying to take over him. “Monsieur, you saved my life again.”

Oh. So it was Pontmercy then. That was… that was strange. He was really rather sure that Thénardier had been aiming at Cosette. But then did… did Pontmercy push her away? He really needed a lesson about that: he shouldn’t play the hero. Heroes didn’t live long and it was a role to be played only by people like Javert, whose life was barely worth the air he breathed.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Those hands on his shoulders were pulling him to sit up, and he went willingly. His head was laid against a broad shoulder. Shaking fingers went through his hair.

“Five thousand francs,” he heard a voice say. His own voice. Did he really sound like that, so breathless and weak? “One bullet each for two thousand five.”

“Shhh,” Valjean said, sounding choked. “Shhh. Don’t try to speak.”

“Debt’s repaid,” Javert continued.

“There’s no debt!” Pontmercy cried. What was he so frantic about? “There has never been- Oh God, God, Monsieur, please, please stop _talking_!”

Nice kid. But easily panicked. Javert raised a shaky hand over his mouth as he found himself coughing again. When he lifted it away, he could see the wet redness that covered his skin.

Maybe not _so_ easily, he thought, and wanted to laugh.

White flashed in front of him. White and dark and glinting light off glasses. Cosette. The hands pressing cloth against his chest lifted, were replaced. He tried to focus on the colours swimming in front of him instead of the burning pain.

Distantly, he could hear the river. The rushing rapids. The Seine’s waters lapped at his feet. Red waters, metal-stinking.

Funny; he had always thought he would drown in the blood of those he had ruined instead of his own.

“Stay awake,” Valjean’s voice in his ear, hoarse and tear-choked. There was something wet in his hair. “Stay awake. Please stay awake.”

Javert tried to focus, to obey. There was still… something more he had to say before he allowed the river to take him. 

Water on his shoulder. Cosette’s face swimming into focus for a moment, her cheeks wet with tears. This girl didn’t cry when she had a gun to her head, so why would she… right, the gun. The gun. What she did.

He swallowed down blood. “You did well there,” he told her. She froze, staring at him. “Brave kid. Pity I can’t—” He coughed again, metal filling his mouth, trickling over his lips.

“You can!” Cosette shook her head. Looking at the motion made him dizzier, so he closed his eyes. “Monsieur, don’t- you can! You _can_!”

“Don’t die on me!” Valjean again. “Don’t you _dare_ die on me! I- I forbid you to die, you hear? It’s an order, Javert! It’s an order! Don’t die on me!”

Javert tried, he really did. But the river’s roar was calling louder and louder, and he felt himself being drawn towards it. Water was filling his lungs.

No. Not yet. Not _yet_. Just- just a little more.

He raised his hand and cupped Valjean’s cheek. He tried to smile before he realised that his teeth were likely red, and let it fade again.

_You have been the one good thing in my life_ , he wanted to say. If these were to be his last words, he wanted them to be this. _I’m sorry I can’t obey. I’m sorry about- everything_.

His will was strong but his throat would not work. Valjean’s cheek was so warm, his hand on Javert’s wrist so warm. 

_It’s better this way_.

The river rose. Distantly, Javert felt his body jerk, his lungs screaming for air even as every motion tore the wounds in his chest open further.

Drowning; he was drowning. Blood on the pillow. Blood in the alleyway. His own blood. So much of it, red everywhere. He couldn’t fight it anymore.

He gave in and let himself fall. The river crashed over his head. Engulfing, devouring.

“JAVERT!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d like to apologise about how crap I am at action scenes. I am also sorry about how crap I am at casefic, because, well, there really wasn’t much investigation going on. I’m also _extremely_ sorry about how I dealt with the Patron-Minette: they are more plot devices than characters and I feel horrible for treating Hugo’s characters this way. /breathes.
> 
> I’m finally going back to ‘shit I know how to write’ next chapter. So, uh. Please forgive me my trespasses, everyone.
> 
> PS: If I’m going to kill Javert, there would have been a ‘character death’ warning up at the top. Just saying.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caught by the river’s tides, the slave Javert dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Chapter Five: Brightening Dark**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Depiction of Heaven and the nature of redemption that might be very offensive to some. Please, please keep an open mind. I haven’t given you any reason to distrust me yet, right? …Right?

“Did a good job….”

“I’m not leaving- …”

“…you old wolf, you can pull through…”

“Don’t… leave me! Don’t you dare leave me now!”

“Surgery… intensive care… only a slave… sure about…”

“Don’t call him that! Just- please- … I’ll pay anything!”

“Lucky to have…”

“No, no, he saved-”

“…seizing! Where is the anaesthetic?”

Pain. A world full of it.

“Yes, yes, full care. Now … wait out… Leave!”

“Javert! Javert! I forbid you to die, you hear! I forbid-”

“Papa, Papa! Please, Papa…”

Sharp prick on his elbow.

Darkness.

***

_Underneath him: stone ledge, edges rough. Above: the moon, shining bright. Below: the river murmuring, temporarily calm._

_The world is quiet. A single breath brings the bitter-sharp taste of gunpowder on his tongue._

_It is the night of the barricades, then. Javert sighs: he should have known that he would return here at the moment of his death, this moment when his life changed and his world was tilted askew by his own hands._

_He waits. The moon above is only a moon, casting a grey sheen to the world. There is no path illuminated; nothing for him to follow. The river below him continues to murmur quietly, completely unlike the rushing rapids of Pont au Change._

_Yet the Palais de Justice and the Notre Dame still bracket him, their reaching roofs shining silver bright. He hears the ticking of a clock, counting away seconds that should be meaningless in this halfway place._

_Slowly, Javert stands. This is not where he is supposed to be. He has to walk; he has to find his own meaning here, amidst this darkness and silence._

_So he does, step by uncertain step. The streets are empty; there are not even illegally-parked cars. The river’s rushing follow him; the clock’s ticking follows him. No matter how far he walks, no matter how many turns he takes away from the Seine and Notre Dame, the sounds linger in his ear, steady as heartbeats._

_The alleyway is familiar to him now. He turns and steps into it. The rushing of the river is now joined with the dripping of blood coming from the tops of the walls. Javert turns his head up, and he cannot even find himself surprised when he sees her._

_She sits there in a white dress entirely unlike the one she died in. This one flows like silk and covers her to her ankles and wrists, and it is of a bright, clean white. There are flowers embroidered on the collar, vines at her wrists, and the lace that runs across her throat is beautiful. She carries a garden on her dress, all draped in white that glows underneath the grey moonlight._

_“Fantine.”_

_Hands push against the wall, and Javert watches as she stands in the air, floating there, her long dark hair spread out around her like a halo. Slowly, as if still uncertain of her movements, she lowers herself down to the cobblestones. There are no shoes on her feet – her bare toes peep out from beneath the dress – but the blood on the ground parts from her, leaving her skin pristine in ways he has never seen._

_“Hello, Monsieur,” she says. Slowly, she cocks her head. “I didn’t think it’s you I would see here.”_

_“I’m sorry to disappoint,” he says._

_“No,” she shakes her head. “No, I think… I think this is a good thing.”_

_She looks away from him, walks away from him. Her fingers trail against the walls of the alleyway. When her skin touches brick, the blood skitters away, away, retreating back up the wall as if afraid of the light she exudes with every breath._

_No. Not every breath, Javert realises. Her chest does not move. She is not breathing._

_“At this time, I’m supposed to come for M. Jean,” she murmurs, back still to him. “I was meant to call him from the cares of the world, to bring him to the gardens of Heaven where he can find happiness.”_

_A breeze whispers through the alleyway. It touches her dress briefly, bringing colour to it. The flowers on the collar bloom, petals shimmering like gems, every stitch a different shade, all livelier than stone-caught light. The vines at her wrists turn into verdant green, light sliding across embroidery, threads turning waxy like leaves. The lace on her throat splinters the darkness, pouring light into the alleyway, so bright that Javert stumbles backwards._

_He cannot turn away. Draped in colours, her hair a halo around her, she is breathtakingly beautiful. He knows, in that moment, just what she has become._

_“But it is not his time,” she says, finally looking at him. Her lips are curled into a smile kinder than he deserves. “He has found more to care about; more to live for.”_

_Javert stares down to his hands. He turns towards the river. Its waters lap against shores, against the high banks of Paris. Notre Dame’s bells echo in his ears._

_“I’m sorry,” he says. “I have kept him from his peace.”_

_“You have,” she nods. Javert’s breathing hitches._

_Two words, each one a bullet, hitting his chest._  
  
“He’s fading! Get the defibrillator!”

“One… two…”

_The world rocks. Fantine’s image wavers in front of him. Javert stumbles forward, his hand outstretched before he remembers himself, remembers what he is, and lets it fall._

_She steps towards him. “Look here,” she says, waving a hand. “Look, Monsieur.”_

_He looks. The alleyway looks no different from his dreams, his memories: blood on the ground, blood on the walls. He takes a step, then stops. There is a minute splash. He looks down, and sees the red covering his shoes, staining the leather. Her presence has pushed the sticky, coagulating liquid away from her, and the blood circles him now._

_The river roars in his ears._

_“Are you here to tell me about my damnation?” he asks, tipping his head up to her. “I didn’t think angels come to bring men to Hell.”_

_Slowly, she walks towards him. Three steps, and she raises a hand. Her skin is scorching heat against his own, and he shudders from the burn, feeling his cheek crack and bleed beneath her hand._

_A thumb brushes the blood away._

_“You have kept M. Jean from his peace,” she says, sounding contemplative. “But that is… that is a good thing, M. Javert.”_

_“It is?”_

_“The garden of Heaven brings peace to the wretched of the earth.” Her dress billows out from the incoming breeze, the edges curving around Javert’s legs. “We lay down our burdens at its gates. We are freed from our cares and regrets with our first breath of Eden. M. Jean would have found peace here. You have kept him from it, and it is a good thing.”_

_Javert’s head spins. The air stinks of blood._

_“I don’t understand,” he pleads. His voice rasps in the darkness, echoing back to him._

“He’s starting to seize again! Hold him down, dammit! Hold him down!”

_“Our peace is a distant one, Monsieur,” Fantine says, low and soft, belying the tight grip she has on his cheek. “But it is not joy. It is not joy, for we have so much we have left behind. Our pains and regrets do not hurt us, but we do not forget.”_

_She finally pulls away. Javert falls to his knees, in the blood, gasping, clawing at his throat. His nails scrape across metal – the collar. The chain is draped over his shoulders. How has he not noticed?_

_Her hands tighten on his wrists, pulling them away. His hands are covered in red, slick and gleaming. Javert chokes._

_“I don’t understand,” he begs again. “Please…”_

_“Monsieur…” she murmurs. Her fingers slide across the back of his hands. The blood clears away, revealing skin, and Javert trembles again._  
  
_“We cannot forget. The garden gives us contentment; it gives us consolation. But it does not give us joy. For only the earth can. On earth, souls suffer greatly, but in return, they are given the greatest happiness.”_

_“I don’t understand.”_

_“You have kept M. Jean from his peace,” Fantine says, as if she hasn’t heard. She leans forward, and presses a kiss to his forehead. Her lips burn like fire on his river-cold skin. “Now you must lead him to joy.”_

_“How?” The word wrenches out of Javert. “I...”_

_He tears his eyes away from her, wildly scanning his surroundings. “You asked me to look around me. Do you not see the blood? Do you not realise what I have_ done _?”_

_“What have you done?” she asks with a gentleness he does not and can never deserve._

_“I have sinned,” Javert gasps out. “I have judged others when I have no right to. I have worshipped the false idol of the law, placing it higher than God. I have placed_ myself _higher than God. I have damned others to suffering.”_

 _Forcing himself to look at her, he continues, “I have done_ you _wrong. I have… I have_ ruined Valjean’s life _!”_

_Rapids, rushing rapids in his ears. The river comes to him and he wants to let it devour him. It is a river of blood, the blood he has spilled, the blood of the lives he has ruined throughout his life. Fantine’s blood, Valjean’s blood: let it all consume him; let it drag him down to Hell._

_He deserves demons biting at his flesh. He deserves having his liver ripped out of him daily until the end of time. He deserves…_

_Fantine’s hands are tight on his wrists, and she does not let go._

_“Yes, you have,” she says, and the certainty in her voice is damnation itself, fires that spread through him._

_“I am Hell-bound,” he murmurs. Despair spreads throughout him._

_“You are,” she nods. Her fingers curve over his cheek once more. “But, Monsieur… Look. Look around you once more.”_

_He does not want to. But she is unyielding, and he finds his head turning from the forcefulness of his fingers._

_The walls of the alleyway are still draped in blood, dripping down. He takes a deep breath, shuddering, for what is this but proof that he deserves nothing more than damnation?_

_“Look closer.”_

_Javert does. And he sees, finally: there, half-drowned, struggling beneath dripping red, are tiny buds._

_“They will bloom one day,” she tells him quietly. “The seeds have been sown through your repentance. And with your efforts, with your struggles, they will bloom.”_

_Promises of hope and beauty._

_She stands, tugging at him towards the wall. He follows, speechless, dizzied._

_At the spot where – he remembers, as distinctly as if it had happened but a moment ago – Azelma had been pinned, he sees a tiny, tiny leaf, slowly unfurling._

_Fantine’s hand presses on the wall next to it, forcing the blood to retreat. There, beneath the creeping blood: a single branch heavy with more buds, some tightly-closed, some close to blooming._

_“You have already begun, Monsieur,” she murmurs, grip tightening so he cannot even back away from the sight. “You have already begun.”_

_Her eyes are bright and solemn upon his. “Will you give up now?”_

_Javert opens his mouth. He does not know if this is real, or a dream of a man close to death. He does not know if she is real, or the manifestation of his desperate hopes. He does not know._

_But it doesn’t matter._

_His hands splay on the wall next to hers. The buds feel unbearably fragile beneath his skin. He closes his eyes and breathes out, shuddering. The sounds of the river fade, the ticking of the clock grows louder, reminding, reminding._

_Forty years of causing ruin. Forty years of sin. How much time does he have left to repent?_ Can _he ever do enough?_

 __“He’s stabilising!”

“Thank God. Now move away, we need to get the bullets out.”

_“I will not,” he hears himself say, as if from a distance. He steels himself. “I will not._

_“But I don’t- I don’t know how.”_

_Fantine smiles. This time, when her hand cups his cheek, her skin no longer burns._

_“Every man must find his own way,” she murmurs. “But I have already shown you one possible path, Monsieur.”_

_Valjean. He has kept Valjean from peace, he has ruined his life. And now he must bring him joy._

_Javert shudders again, his shoulders slumping under the weight of the task._

_“God is our guide,” she tells him, a small smile on her lips. “Look upon Him, Monsieur, and remember: all men will have their reward.”_

_Slowly, he nods._

_Her eyes rest upon him for a moment more before she nods and steps away. Javert watches, mute, as the light around her grows and grows until she dissipates entirely, leaving him alone in the empty and dark alleyway._

_Javert takes a deep breath. In front of him is a dead end, the walls on top still dripping steadily with blood. Ahead of him is Hell. Ahead of him is all that he deserves._

_He turns and walks away from it._

_At the mouth of the alleyway, he stops. Paris spreads out in front of him, grey-casted. The streets lead to an endless labyrinth, and the moon ahead still does not tell him where to turn._

__Every man must choose his way. _His own words, once upon a time._

_Slowly, he raises his foot. He takes one step, then another. He walks._

_Away from the river, away from Notre Dame. He walks into the depth of the darkness. He walks, trying to find the light._

__***

Javert opened his eyes. Too bright; he closed them again.

There was something in his throat, hard and irritating. His mouth felt as if something had died in it. Pain was in the distance, held at bay by what he was sure to be an endless amount of drugs.

Slowly, inch by inch, he dragged his lids open. 

The first sight he saw of the world was Valjean, sitting beside his bed: head bent over his rosary, his mouth moving in prayer. Javert’s hand twitched, trying to reach out towards him.

Tiny as the movement was, it seemed to have caught Valjean’s attention. He jerked up, and practically lunged towards Javert’s hand, holding it tight against his. The rosary pressed against skin, beads digging in.

“You’re awake,” Valjean choked out.

Javert tried to smile, to nod, but his face would not move. He could only lie there, frozen, as Valjean shuddered, raising Javert’s hand to his forehead and bowing over it.

“Lord, you are merciful,” he murmured, low and soft. “Thank you. _Thank you_.”

He couldn’t speak through the tube in his throat, but Javert tried anyway: his fingers flexed, each motion taking an incredible amount of effort, and he stroked them across Valjean’s forehead, touching every inch of skin he could reach this way.

Valjean looked up to him. There were tears in his eyes. As Javert watched, groggy, Valjean brought his hand to his lips, and kissed his knuckles.

 _Lead him to joy_. Fantine’s voice echoed in his mind, and Javert found himself reaching towards some sort of conclusion, some kind of answer. It was there, right there, writ in the curves of Valjean’s tears down his cheeks.

His fingers clenched around the rosary in Valjean’s hand.

Slowly, Valjean pulled away. He looked at Javert’s fingers, at the rosary, before he nodded. He wound the chain around Javert’s hand, resting the cross right on the web between thumb and index finger. He looked at Javert, and Javert clenched his fist. Valjean nodded, and gently tucked his hand back amongst the blankets.

Javert’s previous rosary, the one now long lost, was kept as a reminder of his failure, of his own self-righteousness. It was given to him freely by a man hiding behind a mask. Now… now he would have another, given to him by that same man whose true soul now shined so bright through his eyes.

It would be a reminder of his true path, his true purpose.

His hand caught Valjean’s before the man could pull away. With every single scrap of energy he could dredge up, he raised it to his mouth. He could not kiss it; could only hold it there, rosary and skin both touching his lips, his eyes fixed on Valjean despite the grey threatening at the edges.

Valjean stared at him, eyes wide. His smile unfurled like small leaves at the first touch of spring.

When he leaned forward, lips brushing Javert’s forehead, it was a greater, gentler benediction than Javert deserved. One he would spend the rest of his life earning, now that God had given him the chance.

“Rest,” Valjean murmured. “Rest. I will be here.”

Javert’s eyes fell back closed.

He did not let go of that hand.

***  
_  
Darkness, full and all-encompassing._

_Javert raises his hand to his face, pressing fingertips over his own eyes and cheeks. He cannot see them._

_There is no moon above him. Even the stars, ever-constant, are gone. He stands there, frozen and confused, wondering why his mind has brought him here. Has he not found his path? Does it not lead towards Valjean?_

_A weight in his front pocket, like something has been dropped into it. Javert pats it, realising that he is in his uniform: his old uniform of shirt, slacks, leather coat and all; his uniform, which he has not worn in months._

_He wants to laugh. Surely his mind is a fool to place him in these clothes, because he has not been a police officer in a long time, and he has never really deserved to wear the uniform anyway._

_Still, his fingers go to his pocket. When he recognises the rosary, he can’t even find it within himself to be surprised._

_It glows. Javert squints his eyes at the sudden brightness, holding it outwards far enough until he can see it properly._

_Every bead is its own star, and the cross is a supernova in itself. And its light brightens into view the ground beneath Javert’s feet: a winding path leading forward into the darkness, shimmering like the Seine under moonlight._

_Javert takes a deep breath and follows it._

_He does not know how long he walks. Nothing seems to change: the darkness does not shift except when the light of the rosary hits it. The silence is unbroken except for the sound of his shoes on the ground, creating tiny splashes like he is stepping into a thousand puddles. But there is no water on the hems of his trousers, no droplets on the leather._

_Finally, he seems to have reached his destination. His feet know better than he does, for they stop without his command._

_There, in front of him, lit by the starlight of the rosary, stands Lady Justice. She is made of stone, holding aloft a set of scales with one hand and a sword with the other. There is a blindfold across her eyes, and it is made of cloth._

_Javert looks at her for long moments; looks at the embodiment of what he has enslaved himself to throughout most of his life. Once, he had been sure that her sword represented the harsh, unyielding nature of law, and the scales the weight of each man’s sins. Now he looks upon her, and he is not sure about anything at all._

_He should walk away. He should continue down his path. But, looking down, he realises that the grey-silver stops right in front of her. And all around him is darkness that is impenetrable even by the light of the rosary._

_Cloth around her eyes. Javert takes a deep breath. He winds the rosary tight around his hand before he reaches out. Carefully, too aware that every touch is sacrilege, he puts a hand on her stone shoulder. It is cold beneath his skin, and he takes a deep breath before he hoists himself up. He stands on the pedestal beneath her feet, steadying himself._

_Then he uses the hand holding the rosary to pull loose the blindfold._

_Dark eyes look back towards him, warm and terribly familiar. Javert stumbles backwards, half-tripping in the air. He falls backwards, landing in the endless darkness. Heart in his throat, he watches as the stone that forms Lady Justice starts to crack. Bits and pieces fall off, unyielding stone falling away soundlessly into darkness, and every part revealed is brilliantly shining with the light of the sun._

_When Valjean steps out of Lady Justice’s shell and down from her pedestal, Javert finds tears burning in his eyes. He stares at the hand held out towards him, still carrying the scales; stares at the hand that now points the sword away from him._

_Hesitantly, he reaches out._

_Valjean’s hand is warm as he pulls Javert to his feet. Javert feels like a newborn foal, his knees weak, and he falls forward. But Valjean’s arms catch him, embrace him, and hold him tight and safe. Javert trembles, unable to speak, unable to form any words at all, and his own arms are weak as he wraps them around Valjean’s form._

_They stay like that for uncountable heartbeats, Valjean’s beating next to his own. Javert knows that this is even more likely to be a dream than the last, but it is one he doesn’t want to end._

_But, of course, his mind does not obey him. For Valjean pulls back eventually, his eyes warm upon Javert’s. Javert holds his breath, but the other man does not speak, merely smiles._

_He brings the scales forward, then the sword. He brings them up, touches the edges of his own eyes with both, then reaches out to brush them over Javert’s._

__Do you see, _that dark gaze asks._ Do you see now? __

_Javert closes his eyes. “Yes,” he says, the word an exhale echoing around him. “Yes, I do.”_

_The law still remains; the sins still remain. But justice is no longer blind; instead, the eyes are open, bright with mercy._

_Unconsciously, he brings Valjean’s hand, the one holding the sword, up to his mouth. He brushes his lips across the knuckles. Valjean’s smile widens. His hand wraps around Javert’s, shifting his fingers until he, too, is holding onto the sword. Then he turns, and points towards the darkness stretching out endlessly._

_Javert follows the sword; follows Valjean’s eyes. He sees the darkness. Within the heavy silence, he thinks he hears the sounds of dripping blood and aborted screams and a thousand other things._

_This is the uniform he must wear once more. This is the path he must tread. This sword pointing forward, this rosary brilliantly glowing with light he must bring. And this man, with his shining eyes…_

_In removing Lady Justice’s blindfold, Javert has broken apart the false god he has worshipped so long. Within these past months, he has torn apart his own blindfold, his own blinkers, and has seen those shining eyes._

_And within those eyes, Javert finds his new stars, and he gives up willingly, easily, the ones in the skies overhead._

_He wants to laugh. Is his repentance not to lead this man to joy? How can he when he still finds himself following Valjean at every turn? How can he when he is still stumbling after him, caught and held by the brilliance of his soul?_

_Javert does not know. He looks towards the darkness of the path ahead and knows not how he must walk it either._

__“I will be here.”

_Valjean’s voice, echoing around him, cutting through the constant drumbeat of dripping blood._

_Somehow, Javert believes in those words utterly. He looks at Valjean in front of him, and he knows that he must find his own way to earn his place by this man’s side. He will._

_He_ can _._

_As if he has heard his thoughts – and Javert won’t be surprised if he has, for this is surely a dream – Valjean’s smile widens, brightens. His hand tightens on Javert’s._

_Together they take a single step into the darkness, the sword pointing the way ahead, the rosary illuminating the path._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I… don’t know anything anymore except: 1) these two are ruining my life, 2) everything ends up symbolic, and…
> 
> 3) Narratively, Javert is the protagonist (it is, after all, entirely in his POV), but thematically and in every other way that matters, Valjean is. Everything that happens, happens because of Valjean.
> 
> Confession: Javert is not my favourite character. Valjean is. But I find it easy to write Javert and nearly impossible to write Valjean. This _always_ happens to me.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert rises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter Six: Rising Dawn**
> 
> **Warnings:** … Nothing. Except that you might want to kill me after reading. (Please don’t.)

“Try to raise up the bed.”

Quiet, shuffling footsteps; rubber soles against tiles. A steady, constant, beeping. Hands around his face. Plastic tube in his throat, slowly being drawn out. Half-sharp edges against the back of his mouth.

Javert arched, gasping, halfway to choking. Fire in his chest, in his lungs; every breath hurt. Hands on his shoulders, holding him down.

“Calm,” a voice in his ear. “We’re just getting the breathing tube out. Calm down.”

He obeyed instinctively. After a moment as he tried to breathe through his mouth and not choke at the same time, the tube slid out of his nose and finally out of him. Javert kept his eyes closed, trying to get used to the feeling of breathing on his own while flames insisted on licking inside him.

Damn, but he had almost forgotten how much he hated being injured.

A warm, thickly callused hand rested on his forehead. Javert made a sound, unconsciously turning towards it.

“Javert. Can you hear me?” He nodded. “Can you open your eyes for me?”

Hadn’t he done that once already? But he obeyed anyway, slowly trying to open his eyes. Shadows and too bright light pierced immediately, and he squeezed them back shut. The movement somehow managed to jar his chest, and the flames burnt brighter.

The hand moved downwards, covering his eyes. Javert breathed carefully, trying to make sure he didn’t irritate his throat or his lungs. Then he tried again.

This time, it was easier. Darkness gave way to slightly greyer darkness. Javert waited, concentrating on breathing, as the fingers slowly moved away, letting light in, one slice at a time. 

When they moved away, Javert’s eyes were finally used enough to the light to remain open.

Left leg in a cast, half-suspended in the air: Javert blinked, taking a moment before remembering that it was his own. Right; he had forgotten about that particular injury, because it was hard to prioritise a shot to the leg when there were two in his chest.

He turned away from it. The movement brought his attention to his throat again. Javert’s hand flew upwards, jarring the IV line as he touched his neck.

It was empty. The collar was gone.

“Easy,” Valjean said. Those callused hands rested on his wrist, pulling it away and resting it on the blankets.

_What_ , Javert tried to say. But his throat was dry, a dead thing stuck in it, and he choked and started coughing, bending over. His hand struggled against Valjean’s grip, trying to press against his chest as he fought for breath.

“Javert!” Two hands on his shoulders, pulling him back. There was a light scuffle before a mask was pressed over his face. “Breathe! Breathe, slowly.”

He followed the instructions blindly, trying to ease the fire. By instinct, he took only shallow breaths even as oxygen flowed into him, somewhat cooler than the air of the hospital. The fire started to fade a little after long moments.

“Maybe it was too soon for this,” Valjean’s voice said, sounding worried. “Maybe we should put him back under.”

Shaking his head immediately, Javert tried to wave a hand. He lifted his eyes – tearing from pain – and tried to mouth for some water.

Valjean’s face wavered in front of him. He started to nod, and Javert felt the hands on his shoulders loosen. The mask remained for a moment more before it was taken away. He opened his mouth.

Ice chips landed on his tongue. Melting, they slid down his throat, easing the burn, untangling the cotton, and Javert let out a breath as his eyes slid half-closed. He couldn’t even muster up the pride to ask to do this himself; not when he knew that his hands were still too weak to even hold the cup anyway.

The hand rested over his forehead again. “Are you alright?” Valjean’s voice, definitely worried.

Javert swallowed another ice chip. He cleared his throat, and found that some kind of sound did escape him. “Yeah,” he said finally, the hoarse thing that came out of him barely recognisable as his own voice. “Been better, though.”

Valjean made a sound like a strangled half-sob. Javert blinked, opening his eyes again. He saw the nurse exit the room just before Valjean’s head dropped down to rest on Javert’s shoulder.

“Don’t do that again,” he said, his voice as hoarse as Javert’s and without the same excuse. “I don’t think I can- I can survive it if you do that again.”

He froze under the touch, the weight. Hesitantly, he wrapped his free arm around Valjean’s shoulders.

“You… Don’t say that,” he said, finding some sort of fire inside himself that had nothing to do with his lungs. “You better be- don’t say that!”

Valjean pulled back, looking at him for a moment. There were tears in his eyes again, and he lifted his head, pressing a kiss onto Javert’s forehead.

“Javert, you were out for a _week_ ,” Valjean said, voice tremulous and words half-mangled. “A week, then you woke up and went back out for another three days. Ten days. _Ten days_.”

He shuddered hard, as if unable to find words that could encompass what he felt. Javert felt helpless in the face of his grief, his arm merely tightening on Valjean’s back, trying to reassure him with his strength. 

Though it was a poor thing, really, given how weak his grip was.

“Well, I’m awake now,” he said gruffly. “You can’t get rid of me this easily.”

Inwardly, he cursed himself. Why was it so much easier to be honest with this man when he was only half-conscious? When he was near the brink of death?

Valjean burbled a laugh full of tears. He nodded, “Yeah,” and cupped both hands around Javert’s cheeks, leaning forward until their foreheads touched; until Javert could feel each of Valjean’s exhales against his own skin; feel the warmth of them as they seeped into his lungs, inking the insides with Valjean’s mark.

He tried to not shudder, mind scrambling at something to distract him from Valjean’s proximity, his warmth. 

“Can I have the…” 

“Nightstand table,” Valjean murmured, not bothering to pull away. “I put it there after it started tangling in the blankets. Think you could get it?”

Right. It was just a small distance. Javert reached out a hand, blindly groping until he felt the edge of a table. It moved slightly at his touch, but not far enough that he had to strain in order to grab hold of the rosary resting on the surface. 

Wrapping the string around his fingers, feeling the beads against his skin, Javert felt himself relax a little more.

Valjean still hadn’t moved. Javert’s mind scrambled some more for distractions.

“The collar?”

“Doctors took it off. They had to put the tube in.”

Oh. He gripped the rosary tighter. That made sense, he told himself. “I’m not going to go anywhere any time soon,” he said, and tried to shrug. “Not up to it, really.”

Dammit, he was terrible at this. Javert cast his eyes around the room, trying to find something to say that would actually be comforting.

His gaze fell on the wall at the side of the bed. The wall and the hook in it. The hook, and the collar and chain hanging on it.

So that was where they were. 

Valjean seemed to notice his sudden stillness, because he pulled back. After a moment, a thumb brushed over his neck, right where the collar usually rested. Javert swallowed, trying to stifle a shiver, trying to convince himself that the warmth that bloomed on his skin had nothing to do with Valjean’s touch.

“I hate it,” Valjean said, sudden and vicious. “It’s not… It’s not _fair_.”

“Hey,” Javert said, cupping Valjean’s cheek and turning those dark eyes to him again. The jet beads of the rosary gleamed bright against tanned skin. He swallowed. “It’s okay.”

“No,” Valjean shook his head hard. He wiped at his face roughly, the long sleeves of his shirt immediately stained with tears. “It’s not. It’s…”

He fell silent, still shaking his head. Then he seemed to come to a decision.

Javert blinked when he climbed up onto the bed, thighs spreading around Javert’s hips, arms wrapping around him and embracing him tightly. His lips pressed against Javert’s temple, his hand sank into his hair, fingers resting at the base of his neck.

The shock of the movement was enough to make the rosary slip from Javert’s hand. It dropped to the ground, clattering against tiles. He wanted to pick it up again, but he couldn’t move.

“It’s not- it’s not fine. It’s not okay. It’s not- it’s _not_ -”

“Shhh,” he murmured, because he could find nothing else to say. He didn’t even know the reason why Valjean was reacting like this. “Shhh.”

Valjean shook his head. His voice died off, and he only trembled in Javert’s arms for long moments. Every breath he took sounded like a sob, and Javert felt more helpless than he ever had in his entire life.

The shadows of bastards hovering at doors, he could handle. Guns and knives, he could handle. But such worry, such concern, such immense _relief_ – all for Javert’s sake when he had known no one who had ever given him a fraction of such things? He had no idea what to do, and he cursed himself for it.

He could only hold onto Valjean, making meaningless noises against his cheek, his ear, his temple even as tears soaked into his own hair. He could only stroke that broad back slowly, trying to not jar the needle out of his hand – less for his own welfare, but because he knew Valjean would probably worry again if he did.

Slowly, Valjean seemed to calm. He buried his face into Javert’s shoulder for a moment, shuddering hard, before he pulled away.

“Look at me,” he said, wiping at his face with his knuckles. “You just woke up and you had to deal with me like this.”

“It’s okay,” Javert said awkwardly. He brushed his thumb over that cheek, wiping at a tear-streaked spot Valjean had missed. “I… Look, how many times have you seen _me_ fall to pieces by now? I think you’re due at least one.”

Valjean looked at him before he burbled another laugh. He leaned forward and pressed another kiss to Javert’s forehead, resting his head there for a moment.

“You’re awake,” he murmured again. “Thank God you’re awake.”

“I’m going to be fine,” Javert said, though he wasn’t sure about it. His lungs still felt like they were on fire, every breath hurt, and every word was sandpaper against his throat. But he just wanted Valjean to stop looking at him with those fragile eyes.

“Yeah,” Valjean whispered, thankfully believing him. “Yeah, you’re going to be.”

They just sat like that for a moment more, pressed together, before Valjean peeled himself away. He climbed out of the bed. But Javert’s skin had only a moment to ache for the loss of contact before Valjean took his hand again, gripping it tight as if Javert was going to disappear the moment he let go.

Javert didn’t try to pull away. He only stared at their joined hands for a moment – funny how strange that made him feel when he didn’t feel nearly as odd with Valjean in his arms – before he cleared his throat, licking his lips.

“How are the others?”

“They’re fine,” Valjean said. He lifted his other hand, brushing over Javert’s cheek. Right, the cut there; so insignificant a wound compared to the rest. “Just worried about you.”

“I,” Javert cleared his throat again. “I apologise for the inconvenience.”

When Valjean blinked up to him, he tried for a smile. It came out as a lopsided thing – half of his face seemed to be frozen due to the healing scab on the cheek – but Valjean laughed again, soft and tremulous. He raised Javert’s hand up and pressed it to his lips.

His left hand was trapped by the IV line, but there was just enough give to it to let him skim his fingertips over Valjean’s cheek.

He had no idea how things had gotten to this. Even though Valjean had always seemed to be a man who found it easy to reach out – a brush over Champmathieu’s jaw, an attempted clap on Javert’s shoulders in the sewers – Javert had avoided touch his whole life. But he found himself now clenching onto Valjean’s hand with all the strength he had, his body desperate for Valjean’s warmth as if trying to make up for nearly five decades of deprivation.

The yawn caught him entirely by surprise. Javert cursed himself, cursed his body: he had been awake for not even an hour, and his body wanted to go back to sleep?

“I should let you rest,” Valjean murmured.

“No,” Javert tried to say, but the word was broken up by another yawn. He scowled. His cheek tugged, the scab threatening to pull open, and he sighed instead, slumping hard against the upraised bed.

“Dammit.”

“You just woke up from a coma,” Valjean said, sounding amused. “You were shot three times and lost a great deal of blood.”

“And I’m not as young as I was,” Javert grumbled. Nearly fifty, and he knew this man for most of that life. Knew him and never saw him properly until less than a year ago.

He ducked his head until he could rub his eyes with his left hand. He needed to stop thinking about this, because there was nothing he could do to turn back time, and cursing himself for his own blindness would only lead to further frustration.

The chair scraped lightly against the floor tiles as Valjean stood up. He bent over the ground before leaning across the bed to press a kiss over Javert’s hair again. His hand rested over Javert’s: the rosary’s cross rested cool on skin. “Rest,” he said firmly.

Javert looked up at him. He swallowed. “Stay?”

Valjean’s smile was still tremulous, but it was brighter than before. His hand cupped Javert’s cheek, rough and warm.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Turning his face, Javert pressed a kiss to the palm. Valjean’s breath hitched, a tiny sound, but Javert only let his eyes fall close.

The darkness was coming for him again. But Valjean’s hand on his was an anchor to the world, Valjean’s presence was reason for him to push it away. There was so much for him to do the moment he could get out of this bed. Even though he still didn’t know how on Earth he was supposed to accomplish any of it, he was going to try.

He wasn’t about to let this darkness hold onto him for any longer than it had to.

***

It was a few days after Javert woke up, when the doctors had finally given him leave to sit up on his own, that Pontmercy came to visit him.

The boy had not been with Cosette and Valjean when they had dropped by the day before, and Javert blinked at the dark circles underneath the boy’s eyes. He wondered at the cause: it couldn’t have been the fact that he saw a man being shot, because Pontmercy had been at the barricades, and worse had happen there.

“M. Javert,” Pontmercy asked, lingering at the door. “May I… may I speak to you for a few moments?”

Javert shrugged. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said with a voice still hoarse. When Pontmercy hesitated, he rolled his eyes. “C’mon in and start talking already.”

Pontmercy nodded, walking to the bed and dropping down heavily on the seat. His eyes drifted to the collar and chain hanging on its place beside Javert, his fingers twitching as if he wanted to sweep them away, before he took a deep breath.

“You know that I’m a lawyer,” he began. Javert nodded.

“I began studying law at the behest of my grandfather,” the boy continued, staring at his hands. “Later, when I… when I left my grandfather’s house, I continued my studies even though I thought I shouldn’t, because, you see, M. Javert, I left my grandfather’s house when I found out about my father.

“My father was an… an exile. A few years before I was born, he took part in the failed revolution. He survived it, and as a consequence of both his actions and his position, he was exiled instead of put to death.”

A revolution more than twenty years ago; ah, yes, Javert had some vague memories of it. Not much, because he was still in Toulon then, and it had happened in Paris. He looked at Pontmercy, halfway to opening his mouth to ask the boy just _why_ he was telling all this to him.

But Pontmercy wasn’t looking at him, instead staring into the distance. “I left my grandfather’s house for my father. And I joined my friends at the barricades for him too, because, surely, he was my father, and my views are similar to his?” he dragged a hand through his hair. “But I… I found myself fighting alongside my friends not for their causes. But because they were my friends. They were the first to show kindness to me after I went out to the streets.”

Javert could no longer help himself: “Why are you telling me this?”

“Please,” Pontmercy said quietly. “I don’t know how else to tell you this, so… please, indulge me for a moment more.”

Slowly, Javert nodded. This was a side to the boy he had never seen before.

“I fought alongside my friends without believing in their cause. Later, at the barricades, I was willing to die because I thought- I thought Cosette had left the country, and that my life had no meaning without her in it.” 

He rubbed hard at his face, huffing a breath that was too bitter-sounding to be a chuckle. “There was… there was a girl. A friend of mine, named Éponine. Éponine Thénardier. The older sister, I think, of the girl you saved.” He hesitated. “She died because of _me_. She came to the barricades for my sake, and died there because…”

Swallowing, Pontmercy took another deep breath. Javert watched him, not knowing what to say, or if he was to say anything at all. 

“She died for me,” Pontmercy continued eventually, his eyes growing distant again. “And Gavroche- little Gavroche, the one who denounced you, Monsieur. He died there too. After M. Jean let you go, he was shot by the National Guard when picking up ammunition, even though we all told him… we all told him not to go.”

Pontmercy lost almost every single person he cared for at the barricades, Javert realised. He surrounded himself with friends, and all of them were shot dead and only he was spared.

“I’m sorry,” he tried. What else could he say? What else? For Javert never knew what it was like to lose anyone he cared for during his life. Losing the law was not nearly the same.

“No,” Pontmercy shook his head. “I’m not here for- for that. I…

“My father, my friends, my grandfather… M. Jean, and even _you_ , all of you are willing, so willing, to die for what you believe in. You have something you _believe in_ so greatly, a cause you’re willing to suffer through any storms for. And I… I never had that. I never had that.”

He closed his eyes. “Éponine was… I knew how she lived. I _knew_. And I heard, over and over, Enjolras’s speeches about the suffering of the people. And yet I’ve never… I’ve _not once_ tried to better her life. Not once did I even realise that the suffering my friends talked about was right in front of me, and there was something I could _do_ about it.”

Well, so Pontmercy had an epiphany. Was Javert supposed to applaud him, praise him, for it?

“But now I think I have found a cause, Monsieur,” Pontmercy said. His gaze shifted once to the collar and chain hanging beside the bed. Reaching out, he brushed his hand over them.

“I told you all this so you will know that my actions from now on are not fuelled by obligation for what you have done,” he said, his voice growing stronger. He turned, dark eyes fixing on Javert’s lighter ones.

“Let me finally put my studies of law into use. Let me try to free you from the collar.”

Javert stopped breathing. “What?” he choked out.

“You saved my life, Monsieur,” Pontmercy said quietly. “It does not matter if you think it debt, or even if you meant to do so. You saved my life, and you were grievously injured for it. Yet, when we arrived here, the doctors said,” he took a deep, shuddering breath, “they said, you’re only a slave, why should any of us, why should _they_ , even bother?”

“Well, that’s-” _not surprising_ , Javert wanted to say, but Pontmercy was practically steamrolling over him.

“Why should a man, why should any living, thinking creature, be seen to be less by anyone? Why should their deeds be lesser in value just because of what the eyes of the world see them to be?” Pontmercy’s hands shook, and he clenched them on the railing at the side of the bed. 

“I finally understand, M. Javert. I finally understand what Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac and the rest of them were fighting for. They had seen the suffering of the people and said, ‘This is not fair. This is not just. We will not let it stand.’” 

Pontmercy grabbed the collar and chain, holding them with white-knuckled fingers. “And now I say,” he turned to Javert again. His eyes burned. “This is not fair. This is not just. _I will not let it stand_.”

In that one moment, Javert saw a boy grow into a man in front of his eyes. He just wished that it wasn’t for his sake.

Gently, he reached out. It took some effort that he could barely spare to wrestle the collar and chain from Pontmercy’s hand, but he managed it, and hooked them back into their places.

“You should not waste your efforts on me,” he said, low and quiet. “There is another for whom this newborn spirit of yours can serve better.”

“M. Jean,” Pontmercy nodded. He sank down to his chair. “Do not worry, I have already decided: he will be my second case.”

Javert blinked.

“I cannot fight for his exoneration if you are not free, M. Javert,” Pontmercy said, dragging his hand through his hair. “A convict cannot own a slave.”

“You can have my contract transferred back to you,” Javert pointed out.

“No!” Pontmercy burst out. He winced as his voice echoed back towards him, and rubbed his mouth hard. “No. That’s…”

“Don’t let your squeamishness stop you from doing what you have to do now.”

Pontmercy looked at him for a moment before he sighed. “It’s not squeamishness,” he said. “Well, it is a _part_ of it, but…” He hesitated.

“Your case is easier to win, M. Javert,” he said finally. “There is a clear miscarriage of justice: the charge laid upon you in the first place was unlawful. And if I can… if I can free you by proving that the law can be misused and abused, then M. Jean’s case will be far easier to fight for.

“M. Jean is a good man,” he continued, voice a little faraway. “But he is still guilty of all the charges laid upon him. While there were… some precedents of appeals being made on account of character, there are few cases of them _succeeding_. But if it is made clear that there has been a miscarriage of justice done and that the law must look with clear eyes on the circumstances of a case… then we have a stronger chance to win.”

Realising that Javert was staring at him, he shrugged sheepishly. “I had been doing a lot of reading during your convalescence,” he said. “Thinking, as well.”  
 _  
Was that a great strain_ , Javert wanted to ask, but he swallowed his words back because Pontmercy was desperately earnest about this, and to put down his efforts would be cruelty. And while Javert knew himself capable of great cruelty, he would not allow himself to fall back into it.

“There is just one flaw in your plan,” he pointed out instead. “What makes you think that any court would take the case of an untried lawyer?”

Pontmercy lifted his head, and smiled. The edges of it looked like a smirk. “I asked my grandfather for his support,” he shrugged. “And he gave it.”

“What?”

“My friends would likely think me despicable for doing this, but…” he rubbed the back of his neck. “Grandfather is a well-respected statesman with great influence.”

So the barricades would not be his battlefield any longer; instead, Pontmercy would make the law courts into his battlefield, with his grandfather’s influence as the catapult to begin the siege.

From a boy with no ambition, he had grown into a man with almost too much.

Javert shook his head, stifling a laugh because he knew that it would hurt his lungs and ribs. If he had told himself a year ago that he would have a rebel fighting for his cause and be glad for it, his past self would have immediately slapped him in irons.

“Have you sent the case to the Cour de Cassation yet?”

“Not yet,” Pontmercy said, sheepishly rubbing at his mouth. “I wanted to wait for your permission, Monsieur. Do I… do I have it?”

There would not be a revolution again; not for a long time. But, looking at Pontmercy, he wondered how the country would change under this man’s fire, fed by the wood of his grandfather’s influence. He wondered where the Javert of a year ago had gone, the man who would rather throw himself into a river instead of admitting that there was a necessity for the law to change, or even that the world was not monochrome, but a dizzying, dazzling display of light.

A year ago, Javert would have held stubbornly against change. Now he found himself the catalyst to it.

“Yes.” 

Let him be the catalyst; let him be the stepping stone. Let him be the lens through which the courts saw their failures.

Let him be all that. Then let the courts look with kinder eyes towards Valjean and exonerate him; let them see with clear eyes the star-brilliance of his soul.

***

The sound of the door closing jerked Javert from the mild doze he had been indulging in since Pontmercy’s departure. He blinked open his eyes, looking at the clock. 

“All five of the Patron-Minette were arrested and are now kept under maximum security,” M. Chabouillet began briskly, locking the door behind him. “Thénardier’s wife has been captured as well. Her husband ratted out her location in minutes.”

He strode towards Javert’s bed, already tugging off his gloves. “The charges have been decided.”

Javert blinked. He opened his mouth to ask how his former superior had managed to get in here after visiting hours, then closed it, because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer.

“What are they?” he asked instead.

“Multiple counts of theft, robbery, and fraud from their previous activities,” M. Chabouillet said, starting to count off his fingers as he dropped into the chair. “First-degree murder for Montparnasse and Clasquesous, if we can straighten out their statements.” He paused, dragging his hand through his hair in a sharp, rapid movement. He did not turn to Javert.

“For what they did nearly two weeks ago: attempt robbery, multiple counts of assault, attempted murder for Thénardier based upon the Pontmercy boy’s statement regarding the man holding his fiancée hostage, and…” He sighed. “Attempted destruction of property for what he did to you.”

Javert nodded. “As I expected, Monsieur le Secrétaire,” he murmured. Almost exactly. There was something missing from the list; something that escaped Javert’s mind at the moment.

“No,” M. Chabouillet dragged his hand over his hair again.

Finally, he turned to look at Javert. There was a storm in his light eyes, and his hair was dishevelled enough to fall in strands all over his face. Javert blinked, his world tilting slightly on its axis because he had never, not once, seen M. Chabouillet so utterly… agitated. 

His lips pressed into a line. Then he slammed a fist into his palm, the sound gunshot-loud in the room.

“Dammit, it _should_ have been two counts of attempted murder!” he hissed. “Two counts, and another for resisting arrest, and another for resisting an officer of the law!”

“I’m not part of the police anymore,” Javert pointed out, a little weakly.

“Are you not?” Those fierce eyes turned towards him. “Tell me, Javert: didn’t you try to take on the Patron-Minette alone because you thought yourself a police officer, and better equipped to dealing with men like them instead of civilians? Didn’t you do your best to fulfil your duty to protect the civilians from _men_ ,” his lips twisted, “like Thénardier and the rest of them?”

Javert hesitated. He swallowed back a sigh. “You think too well of me,” he said quietly. “I simply did not wish for them to be harmed, because I… care for them. My deeds were done for personal reasons, not out of duty.”

M. Chabouillet made an abortive motion, as if he was trying very hard to not roll his eyes. “Your first instinct is to protect, is it not?” Before Javert could even reply, he waved a hand. “You’re a police officer through and through, Javert. Stop trying to convince me otherwise.”

“Is that what the law is supposed to do?” Javert blurted. “To protect?”

If asked later, Javert would blame the drugs and his exhaustion for his loose tongue.

“Of course it is!” M. Chabouillet cried. He made to continue, then stopped himself, his eyes resting on Javert once more. Once more, he dragged his hand over his hair, dislodging even more of the strands.

“It has done terribly by you,” he continued softly. “But an abuse of the law does not, should not, corrupt its true purpose.”

Javert stared down at his hands. He thought of Azelma; thought of other girls like her, the reports that laid gathering dust on countless desks in the Palais. He thought of M. Chabouillet himself and his resistance towards giving her protection, simply because Thénardier was her father and the law did not cover the abuse of parents towards their children. He thought of Azelma, pale and tremulous as she came to visit him, torn between her concern over him and her worry about her father, her cheeks gaunt with hunger and her fingers rough from work despite her age.

This man was one he had admired for most of his life. He owed his career to this man. And yet, Javert realised, even M. Chabouillet was a captive of the law, blinkered by it. Less than Javert used to be, but there were still shades, still colours, he did not see.

He wanted to say all these things. He wanted to remind M. Chabouillet of the email he had sent, a lifetime ago, about the betterment of the treatment of convicts; about the education of God’s mercy to policemen and guards.

But he could not find the words. And even if he could, he did not know how to voice them to this man. 

“Javert,” M. Chabouillet said. “I tried to campaign for the charges that _should_ be levied against Thénardier. But…” He stopped once more.

Raising his head, Javert realised his former superior’s eyes had fixed upon the collar and chain hanging beside his bed.

“If I could break that thing with my bare hands and have it mean anything,” M. Chabouillet said, voice soft and dangerous. “I would.”

All of them. Every single person who came to visit him had looked upon the collar and said much of the same thing. Javert knew his trial was unfair, but that was his own error for pleading guilty to a charge that was unjust. And even if it was not… even if it was not a mistrial…

His thoughts turned to Khulai, the once-vibrant man now faded, all joy leeched out of him with every clanging of his chains. He thought of Valjean from decades ago, a man reduced to a beast caged by a collar thicker and chains even heavier than what Javert wore now. 

If something was unfair, if something was unjust, then it should apply to all. Not only to him. Because that would be injustice itself.

_Here_ , a voice urged him within his mind. _Here is your chance to take the first step_.

“M. Chabouillet,” he said finally, lifting his head. “How strongly do you feel about this?”

His former superior blinked, tearing his eyes away from the collar and chain to look at Javert once more. The scrutiny lasted for long seconds before he shook his head, chuckling lowly. “What do you have in mind?”

“Pontmercy is planning to submit my case to the Cour de Cassation,” Javert said.

“That boy is?” M. Chabouillet paused for a moment, then nodded. “Good for him. I can put in a word for his case when he does. I can even testify for your sake if there is need. But…” 

He frowned. “Why would the Cour even take an appeal for what they clearly see as an open-shut case from an untried lawyer?”

Javert’s lips curled up, slowly, into a smirk. “Pontmercy has his grandfather’s support,” he said.

“Oh?”

“His grandfather is a M. Gillenormand.”

M. Chabouillet blinked. Slowly, like ripples in water after one dipped a toe into it, his shoulders began to shake. “Yes,” he chuckled. “If there’s anyone who can go against that wily fox Tholomyés, it would be the old horse Gillenormand.”

The sound of that name had Javert jerking. It had been a long while since he had even thought of the name of the man he killed. Jeannot Tholomyés, son of a wealthy provincial lawyer with plenty of connections at the higher courts.

That man had been a headless corpse in his mind for so long that it was a visceral shock to be reminded that he’d had a name.

“But that has cause to have me worried as well,” M. Chabouillet continued, seemingly unaware of the ghost crowding into the edges of the room. “It might turn out to be a rehash of the old feud between Gillenormand and Tholomyés with you as their pawn, Javert.”

He shooed the ghost away. There would be time for it later. “The old feud?” he repeated.

His former superior laughed again. “I forgot how little you know of history,” he shook his head. Leaning back against his chair, he crossed his legs and rested his hands on top of them.

“You do know that, during Our Great Napoleon’s unification of France, he had two different forms of allies, yes?” M. Chabouillet began in the tone he usually used for a lecture. “Those who were by his side from his first attempt, and those who joined later on, whether willingly or not.”

Slowly, Javert nodded. He did remember that, if only vaguely. Most of his education about history had been his youth, and that had been a very long time ago. And even then he had only been concerned with regards to the changes in the law, and there had been few since the unification over thirty years ago.

“The Gillenormands were of the first sort of allies. The old horse’s father had been one of Our Great Napoleon’s best friends even when he ruled only Île-de-France, and the old horse himself fought in most of the battles of the unification. While Our Great Napoleon was still alive, Gillenormand was one of his political advisors until his death, then an advisor to Our Second Napoleon until his retirement.”

M. Chabouillet paused. He rubbed a hand over his chin thoughtfully.

“Tholomyés comes from one of the great families of Midi-Pyrénées. The man’s grandfather used to fight _against_ Our Great Napoleon until unification became a certainty instead of just a vague pipe-dream. Then he switched sides and bowed his head. Before that time, he used to badmouth Our Great Napoleon at every damned opportunity.” 

He glanced at Javert before chuckling to himself. “You don’t know the old horse, Javert, but anyone who has met him knows just how well he takes to _that_. He didn’t gain that nickname for disloyalty, that’s for certain.”

Suddenly, Pontmercy’s rambling about the relations between his father and grandfather made much more sense.

“The wily fox now is even worse than his grandfather,” M. Chabouillet continued, sighing. “At least old Tholomyés had respect for the law and authority. This one treats it like a child would his toy, using it to get his way. Worse still, his damned name lets him do it.”

This was a world that Javert knew nothing about. He was a child of a convicts; his world had been the gutters. The glittering realm of the aristocrats and the upper-classes had always been apart from him; something he had looked upon with admiration and then turned away.

But now he must enter it. He must, for the pathway to righteousness involved change in the law, and such changes could only come from the glittering world.

He never thought he would find himself thankful for the existence of Marius Pontmercy.

“Are you sure you are willing to get in between that old feud?” M. Chabouillet asked.

“That’s a risk I have to take,” Javert replied, hands clenching on the sheets. “I doubt that there is any other who will be willing to take on the case.”

“Especially not with Tholomyés involved,” M. Chabouillet sighed. He rubbed at his face. “I’ll put in a word, get the case passed. But look, I know Tholomyés’s tricks. He’s going to come to you, Javert.”

Javert shrugged. “As you said, Monsieur, I am a police officer.” He spread his hands out, one further than the other. “I made a livelihood at staring into danger and not blinking.”

M. Chabouillet stared at him.

“Surely a lawyer has nothing on the barrel of a gun?” Javert added uncomfortably, hands falling back to his side.

There was another moment of silence before M. Chabouillet threw his head back and laughed, a loud, hearty roar that surely would alert the nurses and doctors to his presence. But no one came knocking – confirming Javert’s suspicions about just how his former superior even gained entrance here.

A hand rested on his shoulder, and his former superior grinned at him. “And here I was, wondering where that spirit of yours had gone.”

Javert stared at that hand before lifting his eyes to M. Chabouillet’s face. He tried for a wry smile. “You have to thank Fauchelevent for that,” he said, because it was true.

A stillness came over M. Chabouillet’s features.

“It is by his orders that I call him that.”

No. No, that was not the reason. Javert remembered now what was missing from Patron-Minette’s list of crimes: malicious communications. Harassment. His breath hitched in his throat.

But he did not look away.

“Hah,” M. Chabouillet said eventually. His hand slid off Javert’s shoulders. “So he did.”

“Yes,” Javert’s fingers twitched. He dug them into the blanket. “He is… he is a good man.”

“So he is.” There was a moment of awful silence before he nodded, straightening. The grin returned, but it was distracted, and there was still a storm in those light eyes.

“Well, recover quickly, Javert. Gain back your strength. I’m sure you will need it.”

Javert ducked his head, trying to hide the turmoil within him. “Thank you, Monsieur,” he murmured.

“And give my greetings to,” there was just the briefest of pauses, “M. Fauchelevent.”

“Of course.”

When the door closed after M. Chabouillet, Javert slumped back against the bed, staring up to the ceiling. His hand slapped over his face.

_Fool_. Of course Monsieur le Secrétaire would not have been fooled by an inexperienced hand trying to forge handwriting. Of _course_ he would have figured it out immediately.

So why did he still send the men? Why did he still come himself? Why did he not report Javert immediately, or even Valjean now that he seemed to know _something_ about him? Why did he hide evidence of the letter as if it didn’t even exist?

How did he even gather men enough to come to the house on Rue Plumet without any evidence, any sign, of a future attack? Did he… did he _lie_?

His breath was quickening in his lungs, starting the fire again. Javert clenched his fist over his chest, gritting his teeth, forcing himself to calm. 

He should not have broken the law the second time, he thought wildly. But it was right for him to. It was still right for him to aid and abet a criminal because Valjean was… he was so much _more_.

(Fraud. Every time he called Valjean by his false name, it was _fraud._ )

Javert knew he would pay for this. He would be willing to, he would be _glad_ to, if only… 

If only Valjean wouldn’t have to. But this time… this time, it might not be up to Javert.

_Dear God, what have I done?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything is a plot point. Including things I deliberately did not spell out. (Will anyone find out that Tholomyés is Cosette’s sperm donor? Who knows?)
> 
> Yes, this is the start of Marius’s character arc. I have always been so utterly annoyed at how the kid, who is a lawyer, well-born, and has his influential grandfather’s love, ends up doing absolutely _nothing_ despite being part of a revolution. So yes, this will end up as a fix-it in various ways. 
> 
> I love Chabouillet because he gives me the opportunity to do so many things. I think he’s my favourite character to write. He’s so easy! And so useful!
> 
> Book III: **_reconstruction_**. In which there will be more trials, and all of my plot points start to converge and develop fully. Also, Valjean and Javert might even kiss. On the mouth. _Imagine that._
> 
> (No, no one is more frustrated than I am about how slow these two are going.)


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert finds himself giving comfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Book III: _reconstruction  
> _**   
>  **Chapter One: Learned Mercy**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Massive amounts of guilt, self-doubt, and self-hatred. Miraculously, almost none of it is Javert’s.

The hospital’s gardens were a glass-enclosed dome that could be reached from the wards through a passageway that was entirely covered by glass as well. Javert tipped his head, neck pressing against the top of the wheelchair, and looked up to the mid-afternoon skies with its fractured clouds. 

“It’s a pretty place,” Azelma said, her voice soft. She wheeled Javert over to a nearby bench, setting him beside the wood before she sat down herself.

He had asked her to bring him here. A few days of being more awake than asleep and he was already sick of the private ward’s sterile, false-cheerful yellow walls and even more sick of the programmes available on the holographic projectors: the shows were inane, the news even more so, and the daily repeats of the speeches from Our Second Napoleon were nearly enough to make him gag. It was all too infuriating.

Not that the gardens were any better. The leaves were almost too green to be natural, and there were orchids climbing up thick trunks of trees he did not know the names of and had never seen. Mimosa littered the lush grass beneath the wheels of his chair, and Javert used his one good leg to poke at one.

“A tropical garden for invalids,” Javert snorted under his breath. “What a brilliant use of money.”

Azelma giggled. She tugged at a strand of hair before pushing it behind her ear. “I like it,” she said. “Like I said, it’s pretty.”

She had come thrice by now, always at mid-afternoons. Javert suspected that this was the only time she had to herself: after work, and before she had to pick her brothers up from school. The school which she was likely starving herself for.

“Have you thought about what I said?” he asked.

Her eyes darted towards him for a moment before she bit her lip. “I don’t know… I don’t know M. Fauchelevent very well,” she said.

Javert shrugged a little, trying to not jar his ribs. “There are plenty of chances for you to get to know him when you’re living at his house.”

“But I don’t know if he’d be okay with…”

“I asked him,” Javert interrupted. “He’s fine with it.”

This time, he wasn’t guessing – he really _did_ ask. And, as he expected, Valjean had agreed immediately. “Honestly, I have already thought about asking her about it,” Valjean had said, looking sheepish. “But I didn’t know if she would agree.”

“Really?” Azelma looked surprised.

“You’ve never seen his house, so you won’t know,” Javert said. “But it’s rather huge and there’s more than enough space for you and your brothers.”

“What about you? I don’t want to…”

“There’s space for me as well,” Javert said, amused. He tried to not think about how there would be space for even more people if he moved into Valjean’s room, because that was _not_ something he was willing to consider at this point. “Are you finished with looking for excuses?”

She ducked her head. Both of her hands fell onto her lap, and she fiddled with her fingers. “I don’t know why either of you would bother,” she said quietly. “Especially after… what my father did.”

At the mention of Thénardier, Javert’s chest ached. The bullets had been removed long ago, but sometimes he still felt as if they were there. He raised a hand to rub at one of the spots, then dropped it when he felt the weight of her eyes on it.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he said gruffly. “Why would I blame you for something he did? Why would Fauchelevent, for the matter?” 

“I could have… I could have reported him much earlier,” she muttered, still staring at her hands. “Found out where he was and told the police. I could’ve done _something_ before he… he…” She darted a glance at him before she dropped her gaze.

Javert bit back a sigh, rubbing at his mouth. His hand brushed against the edge of his collar – it had been put back on after the doctors confirmed that he no longer needed the ventilator to breathe – before it dropped back down by his side.

“Look, no one expects you to sell out your own father,” he said. Well, _he_ would have, a year or so ago, but there was a reason why he was using the present tense. “So stop beating yourself up about it.”

She didn’t seem to have heard him. “It used to be so easy for me to excuse what he does, you know,” she said, voice small enough that he had to lean against the arm of the chair to hear. “He was nice to me, and he always told me that people he hurt deserved it. Because… because they were rich, or stupid, or stuff like that.”

When she stopped, Javert didn’t speak, simply letting her sort out her thoughts. Finally, she turned to him, her eyes wet and glimmering in the refracted sunlight of the gardens.

“It makes me a terrible person, doesn’t it, to want to stop loving my own father?”

Javert looked at her. He knew what he would have said a year ago: that love didn’t matter; only the fact that she was and remained a lawful person, unlike her father, mattered. But that wasn’t the point; that wasn’t the answer she was so desperately looking for.

He thought of his own father, the faceless creature with familiar eyes and jaw and a convict’s uniform and chains. He had never loved the man; had never even known him except at the moment of his death. Javert couldn’t even remember his face. Hell, he could barely remember his mother’s.

Slowly, he let out an exhale that sounded too much like a sigh.

“A good man once told me, ‘To condemn someone for being blind to what he could not have seen is the same as to be cruel to a sightless man for not knowing the beauty of the sunset,’” he said cautiously. “You could not have known what he was like, because he was your father and he raised you. You could not have known what your mother was like either. Now you know, but… they are still your parents, Azelma.”

He might not know what a parent’s love felt like as a child, but he had seen what Cosette and Valjean shared. And he wondered how Cosette would have ended up if Valjean had not taken her under his wing. Would she have become like Azelma? Would that gentle sweetness of hers have faded and twisted into something terrible if she had stayed under Thénardier’s care?

“It would be strange for a child to not love the ones who bore them,” he continued, dismissing the thoughts of Cosette and the ruin he could have caused her if he had succeeded in recapturing Valjean back at Montreuil-sur-Mer.

“Even if they did not deserve it.”

Azelma didn’t speak for long moments, still staring at her hands. Then she wiped at her eyes, sniffling slightly.

“Did you love your parents, Monsieur?”

“I…”

He didn’t know, Javert realised. All of his memories of his parents had been too tainted by his previous self-righteous condemnation of them, and now he couldn’t even retrieve the originals if he tried. The only thing he had left of his mother was the sight of her on her knees, sobbing into her hands, and his child-self’s disgust at the thought of someone crying over a rightfully condemned man.

She was dead now; she had been dead for a long while. After he had gone under the care of the guards and chaplains in Toulon, she had continued with her fortune-telling (because she had no other way to earn a living, he knew now). If he searched his memory, he was sure that she had died in prison after being re-arrested: hadn’t he received an email asking if he wished to retrieve her body?

He had been sixteen then – perhaps a little younger, or a little older – and dismissed her to be thrown into crematorium and scattered over the ocean like every other convict without family.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I might have once, but I don’t remember anymore.” 

Meeting her eyes, he shrugged a little. “I’m a bad person to ask about the subject of parents.”

“Sorry.” She gave him a wavering smile. “But I… Well, I don’t know who else to ask, or even to talk to about this.”

That was, he realised once more, the absolute truth. Perhaps if Éponine had survived, Azelma could have sought her counsel instead. But she was dead, and Javert might not have met their little brothers, but he suspected that they were too young to be of any use in this at all. No, Azelma would be expected to guide them instead.

He rubbed his hand over his mouth. “You should move to Fauchelevent’s place,” he said quietly. “He’ll probably be better at helping.”

What were Valjean’s parents like? He had them, surely, but Javert didn’t know anything about them. Before prison, Valjean had been – he searched his memory – a tree-pruner, back in Faverolles, all the way up north. A _tree-pruner_ in this age where most people rich enough to own gardens would have enough money for machines that never tired and were believed to do a better job than any human.

Christ. Of _course_ Valjean had ended up stealing. What else could he have done? And wasn’t it winter when he had stolen that single loaf of bread? _Guilty_ , Valjean had said. He had been guilty, but had he had a choice?

Javert remembered, distantly, what one of the guards had told him about 24601. The man had been laughing when he described how the fearsome Jean-le-Cric had cried all the way during the train ride down to Toulon, sobbing as his hands raised and fell in front of him. Like… like he was touching the heads of children. Seven children. His sister’s children.

He looked at Azelma, at her gaunt cheeks, the signs of hunger borne willingly for the sake of sending her brothers, children, to school. She worked the best she could, but what if she was fired? What if she was fired like Fantine had been? What would she do then?

No, he knew exactly what she would have resorted to, in the end.

It had been thirty-eight years since Valjean’s incarceration. Ten since Fantine’s failed arrest. And nothing, absolutely _nothing_ , had changed since then.

His hands were starting to shake, Javert realised. _Unfair_ , voices rang in his mind. _Unjust_. Javert clenched his hands tight, nails digging into his palms, stretching the still-torn muscles on his chest and making his broken ribs ache. But the pain was a distant thing, overwhelmed by the storm boiling within him.

Rage. It was rage.

Valjean named it mercy; Frey named it revolution. Clarisse, with her haunted yet determined eyes, had given it no name at all. But Javert knew exactly what it was; knew the name he would give this: 

_Justice_.

“Monsieur?”

Javert shook the thoughts away, shelving them for consideration later. There was nothing he could do about this now. He had to keep the storm boiling, the flames raging, until his trial was over and he could attempt, in whatever way he could, to change this.

“It’s nothing,” he lifted his eyes. On his lap, his hands unfolded. “Do not fret over it.”

“Do you really think I should go to M. Fauchelevent’s?” she asked again, tugging at her hair. “Even though he lives at Rue Plumet?”

“What?” Javert blinked. “What does his address have to do with anything?”

Azelma gave him a wry smile. “It’s a good neighbourhood, Monsieur,” she said. “I don’t think they’d take kindly to a daughter of a convict who is also a former whore.”

Javert was lunging forward before he knew it. His chest screamed, but his fingers clenched around her wrists. “Don’t call yourself that,” he hissed.

She stared at him, eyes wide. He forced himself to release her, slumping back against the chair. “Look, you know where I come from,” he said. “And it’s obvious what I am now.” He tugged at the ring attached to his collar. “The residents didn’t bother me.”

Except for stares and quiet whispers to each other whenever he walked with Valjean down the streets. But those were nothing.

“Even if they did, are you telling me that you can’t deal with a couple of gossips?”

Azelma looked at him for a moment before she laughed, voice light. “No, I think I can,” she said, her lips twitching. “Alright, I’ll do it. But how…” She shrugged a little helplessly.

“You can call Fauchelevent,” he suggested. “Honestly, he’ll be fine with it if you just drop by his door one day with your brothers.”

“What?”

“He did tell me that you could ‘move in at any time’,” he said, resisting the urge to make air quotes. Still, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes – he appreciated it at this case, but Valjean’s easy charity was still too much for him even with his changed perspective.

“Oh.” Azelma blinked. Then she huffed a laugh, shaking her head. “No, I think I’ll call him first.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Azelma flashed him another smile. It was sweeter now, he realised. Taking up Valjean’s offer seemed to have lifted a weight off of her, bringing with it years off of her face. Javert was suddenly aware of just how incredibly _young_ she was. 

He was reaching out before he knew it. His hand rested on top of her head, and he ruffled her hair. She blinked, ducking a little as she gave him a tiny, nervous giggle.

“I’m not a kid, Monsieur,” she protested.

“You are to an old man like me,” Javert told her. “Shut up.”

She smiled at him again. This time, he felt his own lips twitch upwards, just a little.

They sat there in silence for a moment, just looking at each other. Then she stood from the bench, dropping down onto the grass next to his chair. Hesitantly, her eyes not leaving his, she leaned her head against his good leg.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything.”

His hand stroked over her hair gently. He didn’t tell her that he hadn’t meant to save her, back at the alleyway; even if he didn’t, that was the best decision he had ever made, because it had ended up saving him as well.

Not just his life, but his soul. He might have killed a man, but in doing so, he had saved himself. And he would do it again. He would do it over and over, and much more beside, if it meant that she would never be hurt again. He would do anything to protect this girl; this girl whom he would have simply dismissed as another piece of gutter trash just a year ago.

Funny how the world worked sometimes.

***

“Marius told me that he’s pushing for the appeal to go to court in the next week,” Valjean told him after he carried Javert in from the door – the wheelchair couldn’t get past the stairs, and Javert wasn’t allowed to use crutches due to his broken ribs and healing lungs.

He disappeared down the hallway and came back with the folded chair, setting it next to the couch. “I tried to dissuade him from it,” he continued. “Told him that he should give you more time to recover, but he insisted.”

Javert blinked. He swung one arm around the back of the couch, lifted his good leg, then the dud one. Valjean didn’t try to help him do that, which he appreciated – it was embarrassing enough for him to have to be carried.

Of course he was glad to have a quicker appeal – the faster they finished, the faster he could get on with what needed to be done. His skin was itching from the past couple of weeks of convalescence in the hospital. Still…

“Did he say why?”

“Yeah,” Valjean said. He dropped down on the armchair a little distance away. His smile was wry. “He said that it would make a stronger impact on the judge if you had to be wheeled into the courtroom.”

Opening his mouth, Javert closed it. After a moment, he let out a low whistle. “I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but that kid has the makings of a manipulative bastard,” he remarked.

Valjean laughed, throwing his head back. “It wasn’t Marius’s idea,” he said. “It was Cosette’s.”

 _Cosette_. Sweet, gentle Cosette who looked like she couldn’t even hurt a fly. Sweet, gentle Cosette who trembled in Thenardier’s arms to distract him long enough before she broke his nose.

It hurt to laugh, but Javert couldn’t help himself. He gasped, hand pressed over his chest, and waved the other one when he heard Valjean standing.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said once he managed to regain control over himself. He turned his head up, lips curving upwards, and found himself freezing at the look on Valjean’s face.

He was smiling at Javert; a small, uncertain thing, as though he had been given everything he had needed and didn’t know how to ask for during his entire life. Javert bit his lip, his hand falling onto the couch.

When Valjean walked over and knelt on the ground beside him, Javert couldn’t breathe. He felt his hand being gathered in slightly smaller, far more callused ones, and Valjean bowed his head and kissed his knuckles.

“I’ve known you for thirty years, and I’ve never seen you laugh,” Valjean murmured, wonder thick in his shaking voice. “Not like that.”

Javert reached out. He cupped Valjean’s face, tilting his head up. There were tears in those dark eyes again, and he swiped his thumb gently over the skin below them. Valjean sniffed a little, his smile brightening.

In that one moment, Javert was overcome by the need to kiss him.

He knew, of course, what was between them; what had been between them ever since he sat together with Valjean on the grass in the gardens of this very house, back at the time when they could still pretend to be equals to each other. Or had it been further back, in Montreuil, during that conversation they had about the difference between kindness and justice?

No, Javert wasn’t sure when it had begun. Perhaps this had been there between them ever since Toulon. It didn’t matter. 

His hand had slipped down, and now his thumb was brushing the edge of Valjean’s mouth. There were lines there, he noticed. Lines formed from worry, from frowning, and his heart ached at the sight. Valjean should have lines etched there from laughter instead.

“Valjean,” he started. He couldn’t continue, not when his voice was so thick with a thousand things he couldn’t name and had never thought he could feel.

“Not yet,” Valjean said, his eyes downcast. He turned his head, pressing a kiss on Javert’s palm. “Not until…”

He raised his eyes. They rested on the metal collar: the thick, ugly thing wrapped around Javert’s neck. They drifted to the chain still attached to it; the now-familiar weight of links draped around Javert’s shoulders.

Slowly, he smiled. It was a weak, half-sincere thing. He wanted to say that it didn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter, because he would have worn this collar for Valjean even if the law hadn’t decreed it. But he remembered the sight of Valjean collared and chained too. 

Once, he had laughed at the irony in their change in position. Now he knew it was cruel and unfair, and hated it.

Valjean reached for him with both hands. They curved around Javert’s cheeks, then down. One to his neck, thumb brushing over the skin beneath the collar as Valjean stood. The other pressed over his chest, right over the bullet wounds. 

Without speaking, without need for words, Javert leaned against him until their foreheads touched. His hand found Valjean’s shirt, fingers splaying over the numbers hidden beneath. Valjean’s breath hitched, and Javert brushed his cheek with the other hand before slipping it down to his back, thumb sliding over the lash scars he could feel even through cloth.

They simply stayed there like that. Javert didn’t know what Valjean was thinking; knew only that he was thinking of nothing at all, only counting every steady breath that ghosted over his cheeks and mouth.

Kisses, almost. Almost, but not quite. 

Not yet.

Somehow, they managed to pull themselves away at the same time. Valjean was still looking at him like Javert was everything he ever wanted, and Javert had no idea how to deal with that. He could only take Valjean’s hand, kissing the knuckles shakily. Valjean brushed a hand over his cheek, just as tremulous, before they slipped down and unhooked the chain from the collar.

The metal links clattered onto the floorboards. It broke the silence, the spell, between them.

Javert rubbed his hand over his face. He shook his head. “I’m an old fool,” he said, helplessly self-deprecating.

So much wasted time. Hunter and hunted for decades when they should be walking side-by-side. And yet now that they wanted to, they couldn’t. Javert wanted to laugh hysterically at the unfairness, the damnable _injustice_ , of the world.

He wanted to laugh at his own foolishness. Of all the things that made him hate his own slavery, it would be this.

They looked at each other. Then Valjean cleared his throat. He picked up the chain and tossed it onto the table, walking backwards until he practically fell onto the chair.

“We are both old fools,” he said, and the note in hysteria in his voice echoed Javert’s.

Javert rubbed at his mouth. “Come back here,” he said.

Valjean blinked at him.

“I can’t go to you,” he continued, waving vaguely at the leg still in the cast. “So come back here before I try.”

Raising his arms, Valjean chuckled. It was still a little shaky. “Okay, okay,” he said, standing back up. He paused, shifting his feet from side to side, beside the couch. Javert huffed a little impatiently before he tried to move himself to the side of the couch without jarring his broken leg. After a moment, he succeeded, and tugged Valjean next to him.

If he couldn’t kiss him, he wanted to have him close, at least. Not a distance away where Javert couldn’t touch him if he wanted to.

Valjean dropped down onto the couch, sitting next to him. There wasn’t much space – it wasn’t a very large couch, and neither of them were small men. They looked at each other before Valjean huffed another laugh, wrapping his arm around Javert’s waist and turning him until he was resting against the back of the couch instead of its arm, and his leg was propped on the table.

“I hate this,” Javert complained, incredibly frustrated. 

“Patience,” Valjean told him, lips twitching even as he dropped down on the couch – properly this time. “You’ll heal soon, I’m sure.”

“Not soon enough.”

Valjean snorted. He shifted closer, resting his head on Javert’s shoulder, still careful to not put too much weight on it. Javert stretched out his arm over Valjean’s chest, fingers stroking over his ribs. There were advantages to his height and the length of his limbs, he supposed, even though he had never considered this particular one before.

“Azelma will be back soon,” Valjean said after a few minutes had passed in peaceful silence. “She’s probably picking up the boys now.”

He knew that they had moved in; Valjean had dropped in for a visit a few days ago and told him about it. So he only nodded, and ignored the implication that they should pull apart before she returned because he was far too comfortable right now.

“What are their names?” he asked instead, because he realised he didn’t know.

“Hughes for the older, and Bressole for the younger,” Valjean replied promptly, because of course he knew. He had probably asked the boys themselves.

Javert blinked. “ _Who_ gave Thénardier and his wife the right to name their children?”

“I don’t think they’re such bad names,” Valjean said mildly.

“It makes them sound like old men.”

“Well, one day, hopefully, they will be old men, and it will be fitting then.”

Javert couldn’t help himself: he snorted. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Speaking of names…” Valjean hesitated. “Javert, you…”

“I don’t have a first name, no,” Javert said wryly. “Not legally, anyway.”

“What does that mean?”

“The people who raised me gave me a first name,” Javert said. “But I only had my birth registered properly when I was twelve or so, and by then I hated it. So I told the registrar that I only had a surname.”

Not that he had particularly liked his surname either; it was his convict father’s, after all. Technically, he wasn’t allowed to use it, because his parents weren’t married. But his mother had no surname, so he didn’t exactly have a list of choices. Javert couldn’t have gone by ‘hey you’ for the rest of his life, and ‘nui’ or ‘anonyme’, both suggested by the registrar, had been even less appealing.

“What was the name given to you?”

Javert tipped his head back. He sighed. “Riezo,” he said. “They called me Riezo. It’s… It’s a shortened form of ‘Chuuhuriezo.’” 

He paused. “It means ‘cuckoo’.”

“Oh.”

“They weren’t cruel,” Javert said, rubbing a back of his neck with the hand not around Valjean’s waist. That was something new he realised in the hospital while he had plenty of time to think.

“It was a tease, really. A white boy, plainly _gadjo_ by the looks of him, but accepted by the _gitan_ anyway. But then I… I sold them out, and it _did_ become an insult.”

Rubbing at his mouth again, he gave Valjean a crooked smile. “I thought I’d forgotten about that.”

Slowly, Valjean nodded. He rubbed a hand over his scalp, as if not knowing what to say, before he shrugged.

“I was named after my father,” he said. “Though he wasn’t called Valjean, exactly. More of… ‘Vlajean’, really. I think he chose ‘Valjean’ because it sounded better and was prettier on paper.” 

Javert blinked, and it was now Valjean who had that crooked smile. “There were a lot of orphans left by the civil wars. A lot of surnames were lost, especially in the smaller towns and villages like Faverolles. My family was one of them.”

“Ah,” Javert nodded. He was starting to get the feeling that his knowledge of history was horribly lacking.

“My mother didn’t have a proper surname either. She used her father’s name as hers; she was Jeanne Mathieu, before her marriage. My sister was named after her, and she gave our grandfather’s name once more as a first to one of her sons.”

“I know that,” Javert blurted. “Not the second part, but the first.” It had been one of the reasons why Champmathieu had been suspected to be Jean Valjean, after all.

Valjean nodded. He stretched out his legs, though he didn’t drop them on top of the table. “I had a pretty good childhood, I think. I remember my mother telling me stories, and sitting on my father’s shoulders. My father was a tree-pruner too. Neither of them ever learned to read.

“They died by the time I was twelve. My sister Jeanne was a full dozen years older, so she took care of me for a while, she and her husband. But then her husband died – I think it was during one of the uprisings in Montdidier when he went there for business, I don’t exactly recall. And I had to start working because Jeanne had seven children and…” He shrugged. “You know the rest.”

Javert fell silent for a long moment. His hand continued to stroke along Valjean’s ribs, trying to show him that he was merely thinking instead of judging him.

“You once said…” he started, hesitantly. “You once said the law wasn’t wrong to have condemned you for theft, because you were guilty. But five years for a theft driven by desperation to save someone is… is not just.”

Valjean stilled beside him. “What do you mean?” he asked, and though his voice was steady, Javert could hear the shivering undertone beneath.

“I mean that…” What _did_ he mean? Why did he even bring it up? “Maybe the law was not wrong to condemn theft. Take Thénardier, for example. But… but the men who arrested you, the men who had charged you, they were wrong.”

He took a deep breath. “You said that the law is a tool to be wielded. And I think… it was not wielded right in your case.”

“But I was guilty,” Valjean said. His voice was hoarse. “I did steal. I shouldn’t have. I could’ve waited until morning and _asked_ the baker for a loaf of bread instead. I could’ve…”

Javert leaned in, pressing a kiss to the top of Valjean’s head. “Let me finish,” he said, pulling Valjean as close as he could without making his wounds protest. Slowly, Valjean nodded.

“The people I grew up around were all criminals, you know,” he continued quietly. “My mother was a fortune-teller; even when she was released from her first sentence, she went back to it. I detested her, all of them, for it. But now… they didn’t really have a choice, I know. They couldn’t find honest work. No one would hire them, because of what they were.”

Valjean made to speak, but Javert shook his head, and he fell back silent.

“But they had to eat, and they had children to feed. And after a while, I think… I think they no longer knew how else to make a living.” He took a breath, and looked into Valjean’s dark eyes. “Would you condemn them?”

“I…” Valjean hesitated, then shook his head. “I won’t. They just need a chance. A place, even, where they could do honest work.”

Javert’s lips quirked upwards. He cupped Valjean’s face and brushed his thumb over the side of his mouth. “If you can forgive a band of habitual criminals so quickly, then why not yourself?” he asked quietly. “Once, Valjean. You stole once. Under desperate circumstances. While being so hungry that you could barely think.”

Hunger was something Javert knew well. He had tried to make himself forget, but such things lingered. He remembered being cold too. Cold and hungry while huddling in a cell, watching as the guards walked back, all dressed warmly, some of them with food in their hands that they taunted the convicts with.

There were things he couldn’t run away from. He thought he did, but all he had done was to put blinkers around his eyes and pretended that just because he didn’t see them, they didn’t exist.

“It wasn’t once,” Valjean shook his head. He flinched a little under Javert’s touch, but his hand on Javert’s wrist kept the hand there. “I… After I was paroled, there was a man who was kind to me. He gave me food and a bed and I repaid him by stealing from him.

“I stole his silver,” Valjean continued, his voice rose louder and louder, his eyes wide with panic. “I stole it and I was caught and I lied to the police that they were a gift. They dragged me back to him and he- he _lied for me_. He lied for me and said that they _were_ a gift and then he gave me a pair of candlesticks and said- said that I forgot to take the best of the house.”

Valjean collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut, his shoulders shaking. Javert wrapped his other arm around him, holding him close despite the awkwardness of their position, despite the pain to his chest. 

How long had Valjean been keeping this guilt, this horrible _self-hatred_ in? How could he have kept all this in and continued living, continued helping, when Javert had… God, when Javert had caught one glimpse of the wrong he had done and headed straight for the Seine?

At the back of his mind, the policeman was satisfied with another piece of the puzzle solved: so this silver was where Valjean had gotten enough money to become M. Madeleine. He shoved it to the side; it didn’t matter.

“You were right,” Valjean said, his voice muffled. “Once a thief, always a thief.”

“No!” Javert pulled back. His hand pressed over Valjean’s mouth, and he shook his head hard. “Don’t call yourself that. Don’t…”

He squeezed his eyes shut, dropping forward and pressing his forehead to Valjean’s. “This man… He was the one who gave you the undeserved mercy, wasn’t he?”

Slowly, Valjean nodded. He didn’t pull away.

“The Bishop of Digne,” Valjean said, voice choked. “He gave me mercy when I should have been returned to prison. And I’ve tried to… tried to…”

“You’ve earned it long ago,” Javert said, low and soft. “You’ve earned his mercy long ago.”

“When I earned enough money, I wanted to… to go back to Digne, to give it back to him the sets of silver I stole.” Valjean continued, his voice distant. He didn’t seem to have heard what Javert said. “But I couldn’t face him. How could I, when I was not living as an honest man? When my name was not my own? I sent him the silver sets without signing a name, and perhaps… perhaps he understood. I don’t know. He died while I was still in Montreuil and I never…”

The reason for Valjean’s mourning black at the news of the Bishop of Digne’s death. More and more pieces falling into place.

“Valjean,” he said. “Listen.”

He grabbed the man by the back of his shirt and _pulled_ , stifling a wince at the effort. It was worth it, because Valjean lifted his head – of course Javert couldn’t bloody move him – and stared at him.

“I can’t exonerate you for your crimes,” he said quietly. “That’s not for me to do.” No, that would be a job for Pontmercy and the appeal that would come after Javert’s. The one that could not come quickly enough.

“But what I can tell you is that prison made beasts of men,” he said. “Trust me on that: I spent time on both sides of the bars. Prison made men into beasts, made them base.”

Valjean opened his mouth, but Javert pressed his thumb against his lips. He continued fiercely, “You told me yourself that ex-convicts deserved a second chance to become honest men. You told me that they usually weren’t given it, because people turned them away the moment they saw their yellow passports even when they had done nothing wrong. When a man has been forced into a beast’s skin, when he is treated as such, would you blame him when he no longer remembers how to behave like a man?”

“I…” Valjean shook his head. “It’s not the same.”

Javert ruthlessly stifled the urge to roll his eyes. “It is,” he insisted. “Would the tree-pruner from Faverolles steal the Bishop’s silver after he was given kindness?”

There was a moment of silence. Then Valjean laughed, the sound bitter and sharp. “I don’t even remember who that man was anymore. He lived such a long time ago.”

“Try to remember,” Javert urged.

Valjean’s eyes closed. He leaned forward, dropping his head on Javert’s shoulders. “I want to say that he wouldn’t have,” he said, words muffled. “But I don’t know anymore, Javert. I don’t know.”

“He wouldn’t have,” Javert said quietly. “A man driven by desperation to steal wouldn’t have.”

“What does it matter?” Valjean asked. He still did not lift his head. “I’m not that man anymore.”

Javert took a breath. He rested his hand, gently, on Valjean’s back. “A year ago, I thought that men could never change. Criminals would always be criminals. Policemen would always remain policemen. But I know differently now. Men can change: for the worse, for the better; either way.

“You were the one who taught me that. Why can’t you believe that too? No matter what you have done, you have done more than enough to make up for it. Why can’t you believe that you have changed, when you’re convinced that everyone else can?”

“Because it’s not the same,” Valjean shook his head. He closed his eyes.

Cupping his cheek, Javert nudged at him. “Look at me,” he urged.

When Valjean finally did, he sighed. “I’m a murderer, Valjean,” he said quietly. “I killed a man. No matter what the circumstances, no matter the consequences, that is fact. And even if you try to protest against it, I have ruined more lives, pulled more people into the gutter, than I can count. My list of sins is longer than my arm.”

Valjean was staring at him, mutely shaking his head in protest. Javert ignored him; it wasn’t time to argue about what he had or had not done. The ghosts of hundreds he had wronged would have to be appeased at another time.

“Despite all that, you still believe that I should learn to give mercy to myself. You gave me mercy when I thought all I deserved was to be treated worse than a dog. You still…” Words he didn’t dare form were stuck in his throat. He swallowed. “You still believe there is hope for me.”

“Because there is,” Valjean insisted.

Javert smiled – a lopsided thing that had nothing to do with the healed wound on his cheek. He cupped Valjean’s face with both hands, leaning in and pressing their foreheads together. “You stole bread. You stole silver. What are those crimes in comparison to killing a man?”

“I…” Valjean swallowed. Gently, Javert wiped away at the tear slipping down his cheek. “You can’t compare… I don’t know.”

“Look at me. Look what you’ve done to me,” he said softly. “You’ve turned me from the blind wolf who chased you non-stop to a man trying to convince you of your own goodness.”

Slowly, Valjean started to shake. He buried his hands into Javert’s shirt, pressed his face into his shoulders. 

“I want to believe you,” Valjean choked out. “I want to. God, Javert, you have no idea how much I want to. But I can’t. I _can’t_.”

The word itself was mangled, so filled with despair and everything Javert could barely even imagine that Valjean had been trying to stifle for the past years- no, decades. Javert couldn’t exorcise his demons just as he couldn’t remove the scars under his hands. All he could do was to hold Valjean tight and kiss his temple, his cheek, over and over again, and pray that it would be enough.

“I’ll keep telling it to you,” he said. “No matter how many times you need it, I’ll keep telling it to you until you believe it.”

Valjean sobbed. He clung to Javert, holding him tight as if he feared Javert would disappear if he relaxed his grip even the slightest bit. And Javert let him; let him despite how his chest protested from the weight, with every breath.

What was a little pain, after all, in contrast to what he could give this man?

 _You have been the one good thing in my life_. The words he had left unvoiced as he was dying returned him now, and Javert closed his eyes, pressing another kiss to the corner of Valjean’s eyes.

One day, he would tell this man this. He would, because it was true, and Javert had always been an honest man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Javert got himself a daughter, and her name is Azelma. Yay?
> 
> The names of the Thénardier boys are stole from the anime _Shoujo Cosette_ because I would rather steal first names from other adaptations instead of trying to come up with my own. I hate naming characters.
> 
> Yes, in Book III, Javert learns to share the spotlight with regards to trauma. There will be plenty about Valjean’s healing and horrific trauma. (The second scene took _everything_ out of me to write. I almost had to breathe into a paper bag afterwards. Please tell me if it does the same for you.)
> 
> … Also: Javert, despite his development, is still single-minded and very flawed when it comes to trying to understanding other people. His opinions are not mine.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert’s appeal goes to court.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Book III Chapter Two: Holding Court**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Explicit discussion and subtler depiction of post-traumatic stress disorder; brief violence. Law arguments and procedures written by someone who did not major in Law or has ever stepped into a courthouse. (Just pretend that it’s a Dystopian AU and things are different, okay? Okay.)

It had only taken another week before the Court de Cassation had agreed to hear Javert’s appeal. According to Pontmercy, it wasn’t only due to Gillenormand and M. Chabouillet’s influence, but also public interest. Apparently Javert’s fame had longer arms than he thought.

After bidding Azelma goodbye at the door – it had taken Javert and Valjean’s combined efforts to dissuade her from coming, with Javert’s reasons being that he did not wish for her old, scabbed-over wounds to be torn open by the discussion – Javert gritted his teeth as Valjean slid his arms beneath his legs and shoulders, lifting him from the chair.

When Valjean deposited him into Pontmercy’s car, Javert shifted himself over as much as he could with one dud leg, his lips curled into a wry smile. “Don’t do that when we’ve reached the Cour.”

He told himself, firmly, that this had nothing to do with his pride; much less with the crawling heat he felt beneath his skin whenever Valjean lifted him as if he weighed little more than air.

Valjean blinked at him as he closed the car’s door. He didn’t even look winded. “What?”

“Don’t carry me up the stairs.”

“Oh.” Valjean blinked again as Pontmercy and Cosette got into the car, seating themselves opposite the two old men. “Are we taking the back entrance, then?”

“No. That’ll make us look like thieves.”

“What do you have in mind then?”

Javert leaned back against the seats. “You get out first,” he motioned towards Valjean, “and grab one of my arms. Then Pontmercy gets out and gets my other.”

“But you’re too tall- oh.” Pontmercy blinked. Beside him, Cosette giggled.

“That might worsen your injuries,” Valjean frowned. He turned to Pontmercy. “Oh?”

“We can’t wheel M. Javert in, Papa.” It was Cosette who answered, a small smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. “But if you carry him in, it’ll look too easy. And it won’t fit the image of the brave hero that Marius will be painting.”

Javert tried to stifle a wince at the description. 

“So this is a good solution, actually,” she continued happily. “We’ll show that M. Javert has nothing to hide, and also that he’s terribly brave and stubborn to want to climb the steps himself despite his injuries.”

“I don’t understand,” Valjean’s brow furrowed further. “The Cour de Cassation presides over appeals where there are suspicions regarding the lawfulness of a judgment passed. So what does Javert’s reputation matter?”

The other three people in the car exchanged a swift look. Cosette ducked her head, covering her mouth with a hand.

“You’ve kept so many secrets from us, Papa,” she said. “Let us keep this one.”

Valjean opened his mouth.

Before he could say a word, the car drew up next to the imposing stone building of the Cour. Even before Pontmercy pressed the button for the door to be opened, Javert could already see the vultures outside: more than ten different reporters wearing officious camera-glasses or having them hooked over the glasses they wore, and a few more scattered here and there with poorer looking equipment. There were the gawkers as well: the members of public who had dropped by just to watch.

They stepped back as Valjean exited. Javert didn’t know what it was he did, or said, but no one came close as Valjean followed their plans, pulling Javert’s arm around his shoulder even as Pontmercy took his other side. Behind them, Cosette took the wheelchair from the trunk of the chair and carried it up – somehow, the sight of a Baron’s fiancée doing manual labour resulted in the reporters murmuring into their ear-pieces.

As they walked up the steps, still undisturbed, Valjean turned towards him and murmured out of the corner of his mouth: “I don’t like being kept in the dark.”

“Then you know how I felt throughout those years in Montreuil,” Javert whispered back, just as quiet. “Or how Cosette felt, for the matter.”

“That’s…” Valjean huffed. His steps remained measured and even. “That’s an entirely different matter.”

“No it’s not,” Javert hissed. “It concerns you in a vague way just as the Mayor’s identity concerned me.”

“The vagueness,” Valjean said, eye-roll in his voice even though he kept his face perfectly calm, “is exactly what concerns me.”

“Messieurs,” Pontmercy whispered from the other side. “Surely your argument can keep? We’re almost at the top, my arm is aching, and hearing you just argue is making it worse.”

Javert flicked his eyes over to the boy, surprised. Pontmercy gave him a grin out of one side of his mouth, practically too cheeky for someone like him. Javert wondered if it was finding his purpose that resulted in this, or it was simply that Cosette was a terrible influence.

Somehow, they managed to dump him into the chair without too much difficulty. Javert slumped against it, momentarily allowing his exhaustion to show on his face. It had been over three weeks since the Patron-Minette’s assault, so why wasn’t he healed already?

Valjean wheeled him inside with Cosette by his side. Pontmercy had peeled away – with a whisper to his fiancée – the moment they stepped through the heavy entrance. Javert let himself be moved – there really was nothing he could do about it – even as he tipped his head up and tried to recognise the figures carved into the entrance hall.

It was a moment later that he heard footsteps. Pontmercy’s were recognisable by the swiftness of them, but the other set – much slower, more deliberate, and accompanied by the heavy clicks of a cane – was not known to him.

“M. Javert.”

He raised his eyes. The sight that met him was not one that surprised; he only wondered why it had taken so long.

Gillenormand was a man with a full head of white hair and a thick beard, his eyes shadowed by heavy brows that, too, had gone white. Those eyes were a blue even paler than Javert’s own, and, matched with his paper-thin, green-veined skin and the whiteness of his hair, made him look almost a ghost. 

Javert was nearly overcome by the urge to stand up from his wheelchair and offer it to him. He would have, except that M. Gillenormand’s spine was rod-straight, and the angle of his shoulders declared that any such act of courtesy would only be construed as an insult.

He ducked his head, repressing the urge to bow to a man so much higher up in the ranks, and took the hand. “Monsieur Gillenormand,” he murmured quietly. “It’s an honour.”

The grip of the hand in his was strong. 

_Old horse_ , M. Chabouillet had called him, in a tone full of affection and respect. And Javert knew, without a doubt, that this man had earned that name not only for his loyalty. 

Briefly, he wondered just how a boy like Pontmercy could share the blood of a man like this. Perhaps there was hope for him, after all.

“Come now, lift your head,” M. Gillenormand said, sounding amused. “There is no need for a man who has saved my grandson’s life twice to look at me that way.”

Javert’s head jerked up. “Neither attempt was deliberate, Monsieur,” he protested even before he knew what he was saying.

That was true: during the Patron-Minette’s assault, he had been more worried about Cosette. And before… he had given Valjean the police car while in a daze and some sort of faint hope that he would be able to repay his debt to the man by doing so.

After a moment, he flinched and turned away. M. Gillenormand’s gaze was far too heavy to withstand for long.

“Months ago, I judged men only by their words and their deeds,” the old man said, sounding contemplative. “It’s an old habit of mine, you see. I did not know peace in the world until my hair was already as white as it is right now.”

A pause. “However, recently my grandson and Cosette,” here, he gave the girl a glance so fond that Javert wondered wryly if he might love her even more than Pontmercy did, “have convinced me that men are more complicated than that. That we must take into account their circumstances, their thoughts, and, most importantly, their hearts.”

Javert met his gaze almost unwillingly. But M. Gillenormand smiled, the expression crinkling up the sides of his eyes and turning his face much kinder in that one instant.

“But they have forgotten to tell me about a man’s eyes,” he said. When he reached out to clap Javert on the shoulder, Javert was so surprised that he couldn’t even react. “You have the eyes of an honest man, Monsieur. And a man honest with his beliefs is one I can respect.”

He nodded, stepping back. Before Javert could speak, or even think of a reply, those pale eyes were already turned towards Valjean.

“Didn’t I say that about you too, Fauchelevent?” he asked, one eyebrow rising.

Valjean looked terribly off-balance at being addressed before he seemed to recover himself, bending almost double as he bowed. “You did, Monsieur,” he said quietly.

M. Gillenormand laughed. He raised the head of his cane and tapped it on Valjean’s shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you already to dispense with those formalities?” he chided. “Come, now. We’re almost family.”

“I…” Valjean floundered again. He looked at the cane on his shoulder as if it was something alien. “My apologies, Monsieur.”

“Well, there’s still time for you to get used to that,” the old man huffed. He stepped back, one hand rising to tuck a fallen white strand back behind his ear. His eyes scanned around the room before they narrowed.

Javert turned.

There, near the entrance of the courtroom designated as theirs for the next few hours, was a man. He was short and bald and heavy. Unlike Valjean, he wore his baldness badly – there were a few strands of too-long hair combed over the scalp. His weight was mostly concentrated on the large paunch stretching his white, starched shirt. On one wrist he wore a flashy watch; in the other, he carried a fancy, silver-topped cane.

This man Javert knew; he had met him before: the prosecutor of his first trial. His name was Felix Tholomyés.

Standing next to him, half-bent to whisper to his ear, was the judge who presided over his trial. His hands were pale and fleshly: the hands of a man who had never done a day’s worth of manual labour in his eyes. His eyes, unlike Tholomyés, were well-formed, almond-shaped, and dark. Perhaps he had been tall and broad in his youth, but age had turned him to seed. 

Listolier, Javert remembered. His name was Listolier.

The two men seemed to have noticed their collective scrutiny. They turned, and Listolier’s smile would almost be friendly if not for the half-hidden fear in his eyes. Tholomyés placed a hand on his arm, and smirked. They turned away as one and walked into the courtroom.

“Let us go in and meet the fox cub and his tagalong, gentlemen,” M. Gillenormand said, his voice grim.

“Yes.” It was Cosette who replied. 

Javert blinked, turning to her. Her lips were white, flattened, and she was looking at Tholomyés as if he was a bug underneath her shoe. “Let’s.”

Valjean set his hands back onto the handles of Javert’s wheelchair. As one, they walked into the courtroom.

***

“Your honour, ladies and gentlemen of the public. I stand here before you as a defendant, for M. Pontmercy here has accused the Parisian court of serving injustice instead of justice, and the Cour de Cassation has listened to him. I stand here, too, a grieving father of a son not a few months into his grave.”

Tholomyés’s showmanship had not changed since last Javert had met the man: he strode with confidence throughout the courtroom, down the audience’s benches and back up towards the judge’s stand; his hands gesticulated incessantly in the air as if he found it impossible to rest them. Every other word seemed emphasised. 

“’Why have you decided to take on this case?’ you may ask, ladies and gentlemen. ‘Why have you not allowed another to take it off your hands, and allow the still-bleeding wound of your heart to heal?’ Well, the question is now: how might that would heal, when my son’s murderer now—”

The gavel banged, hard and loud. The sound sliced through Tholomyés’s voice effortlessly.

“Beware of your words, defendant,” the judge said, brows furrowing. “We are now in a courtroom. Not your parlour.”

The Premier President of the Cour de Cassation was a man with tanned skin and large hands, and his thick, heavy brows were usually drawn together, contrasting with the deep-set green eyes. He very rarely saw cases himself. Sneaking a glance over to the audience’s bench to his right, Javert noticed M. Gillenormand’s satisfied smile: it was obvious the reason why he had decided to take on what the courts saw to be an ‘open-shut case’.

Still, it did not reassure him. Monsieur le Président was, according to M. Chabouillet, considered an implacable man, strict with his justice with a reputation of fairness. Even if he might be swayed to take up a case, he would not play favourites.

Javert reminded himself that the original charge was unjust.

“Forgive me, your honour,” Tholomyés bowed. “May I begin again?”

The judge nodded. Tholomyés took a breath, as if to steel himself.

“A man was shot dead in an alleyway. That man was my son, though that fact seems irrelevant to this case. The one who pulled the trigger…”

He should listen, Javert knew; it was important. But he had heard all this before: the facts of the case, some handpicked testimonies from the police officers who took him in. Tholomyés was emphasising on his undeniable guilt, which he agreed with.

Besides, there was something far more interesting that caught his eye: there, sitting two rows behind and several people beside M. Gillenormand, was Frey.

Bent over a notepad with a pen and without his usual red cap, scarf, or any of his rags, the man was nearly unrecognisable. Instead, he was dressed in clothes that would not look askance on a well-born young man in a parlour room: black slacks, light grey shirt, and a pair of glasses. There was only one incongruity: his hands were gloved in white. There were ink streaks on the tips of the fingers.

What was he doing here? Even if Valjean had told him about the case, this was the appeals court: there was no need for witnesses, no need for testimonies; at least not for the first – and usually only – round. The only ones who were required to be present were the criminal whose trial was being re-examined, the lawyers who previously defended and prosecuted him, and the new lawyers who had taken on the case. Given that Javert had been his own defence during his first trial – he had already planned to plead guilty and had too meagre savings, so there was no point in hiring a lawyer – and Tholomyés had – by his own admission – refused to let anyone else take this appeal, there needed to be only three.

He knew Valjean would not have stayed behind, of course. And wherever Valjean and Pontmercy went, Cosette would, as well. M. Gillenormand was most likely here to watch his grandson’s first attempt at being a lawyer. The various members of the public and press were here because vultures were always drawn towards signs of carrion. 

But Frey?

The man seemed to notice Javert’s gaze, because he looked up. His lips quirked into a small smile, edges of his eyes crinkling upwards. He seemed amused, as if there was a secret he was keeping and Javert wasn’t aware of.

It was terribly curious, but Javert’s attention was snatched away as Pontmercy made to stand. Tholomyés had finally finished making his address, and it was the boy’s turn.

“Your honour,” he bowed towards the judge, “ladies and gentlemen of the public,” and to the benches. “Please, if you would spare me a few moments, there is something I would like to say before I formally begin.”

Turning, he faced Tholomyés. Then, in front of the eyes and cameras of the room, Pontmercy executed a deep, profound bow towards the man.

“Monsieur, I am deeply grieved by your loss. You might think it strange, perhaps, for surely I am too young to understand. However, I have lost a father myself in my youth, and the loss had affected me greatly. Surely the loss of your son is just as great, if not more. I extend my condolences.”

Tholomyés gaped at him. The audience burst out into whispers, turning to each other and nodding, approval shining in their eyes. In a single stroke, Pontmercy had managed to overturn the situation. Javert would admire him for it if he didn’t suspect that Cosette had given him the idea.

Still, his sheer _gall_ was impressive.

Pontmercy took a step back and faced the judge again.

“Your honour, M. Tholomyés has given you the facts of the case. There is no denying that M. Javert did indeed pull the trigger. I did not come here to attempt to refute that.” He took a deep breath, eyes scanning the room before resting back onto the judge’s. “I am here to argue that the charge laid against him was unjust and unlawful.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Javert saw Frey sit up suddenly. The pen resting on his lip immediately went to his notepad.

“It was June sixth when M. Javert pulled the trigger. On that night, the violence we now call the June Riots happened. What was kept from the courts then, and which I have proof now from the Secretary to the Prefect himself,” Pontmercy walked back to his prosecutor’s stand, retrieving a sheaf of paper, “was that M. Javert was present at the barricades.”

He paused. “In fact, he was present at the very last barricade to fall, serving his duties as a police inspector of the state.”

For a man who could barely keep his voice from trembling when he had spoken about his dead friends a mere couple of weeks ago, Pontmercy’s voice was absolutely steady now. Javert felt his respect for him grow another notch.

“Can you imagine the situation, your honour, ladies and gentlemen? Can you imagine it? To be on-site when so much death occurred: deaths of good men, brave men, men fighting to protect our country.” He took a breath. “Many Guardsmen had died that day.”

 _And your friends_ , Javert added. They were surely good men too, schoolboys though they might have been, and they were fighting for the country as well. But Pontmercy could not say that; not if he wished for any chance to win.

“That night, I was in my bed myself.” Which was not a lie, technically. “But to have been there… to hear the cries of men as they fell... To know that this surely-horrific pain and suffering was happening… M. Javert had been captured, and he was helpless to do anything as it happened around him.” 

Another technical truth: Javert had been captured and was in the barricades already when the first attack began, and he was already gone from that place when the second one started. There really wasn’t much violence for him to witness or hear.

Pontmercy placed the papers back down on his desk.

“It was mere hours later when he walked past that alleyway. The testimony of the,” a mere hesitation, “cocotte we received mentioned her screams. This man had heard screams all throughout the night. Of course he approached. And when he did… would you have expected a man who had seen and heard death and terrible pain all night to think _rationally_ about what was happening?”

Javert dropped his head down so he would not show the vultures his wry smile. Pontmercy was painting a picture of him that was not only inaccurate, but also far too kind. Around him, the whispers grew louder.

“I would not have, myself,” Pontmercy continued. “Even though I could barely imagine the scene, I… your honour, ladies and gentlemen, please, do try to form the scene in your mind: the screams echoing through the alleyway, and a man who, _finally_ , could do something to make it stop.”

He fell silent. A hush descended upon the courtroom. Javert lifted his eyes. Tholomyés looked enraged, his hands digging into his palms. His lips were white.

“Perhaps nothing terrible was happening. Perhaps it was a game. Perhaps he had misunderstood the situation. But in a situation like this, would a man – any man, even one who knew such situations as a police inspector surely did – be able to keep his mind?”

Pontmercy rested his hands on the prosecutor’s stand. He lowered his head. In that moment, he looked like a man caught up in horror, in grief. It looked terribly real: Javert knew he wasn’t thinking about the alleyway, but the barricades. 

Slowly, he raised his head. His hand rubbed over his mouth.

“M. Javert pleaded guilty to the charge,” he continued quietly. “There is no denying that. However… I beg for you, your honour, to understand: this is a man who had seen so much death, and now he realised that he had caused it himself. The testimonials of the police officers said that they found M. Javert in the alleyway. He did not run. He was on his knees, staring at his hands.”

This was the second time Javert had heard about this, but he still couldn’t remember anything about it. When he searched his memories, there was only a gunshot, a splatter of blood and bones and brains, and, later, the sight of the incoming dawn through the grates of the police wagon.

He dropped his head into his hands and tried to breathe. _Mistake_ , he cursed himself. It was a mistake to try to think about that. He could almost smell the blood now, the thick metal of it. If he raised his eyes, he would surely see that half-headless corpse in front of him.

“Look at him now,” Pontmercy said, his voice coming through thick mist. “Please look at him now. Do you see a murderer, your honour, ladies and gentlemen? I cannot decide for you, but I will tell you what I see: I see a man who has given his life to the protection of our citizens; a man whose first instinct is to protect; a man who was so terribly traumatised by death and pain at the barricades that he found his instincts working faster than his mind; a man who, later, was so wreaked with guilt, so haunted by death, that he could no longer understand that the law differentiated between murder and manslaughter.

“M. Javert thinks himself a murderer. Your honour, ladies and gentlemen, I had to convince him to allow me to take on his case. I looked upon it and found it my duty to do so, for what a man thinks of himself should not be the law’s decree. The law must look with clear objective eyes upon the circumstances in which a crime was committed. It must, for if not, there is no difference between murder and manslaughter. And that is unlawful. It is unjust.”

The entire courtroom was so silent when Pontmercy finished that Javert could hear practically every inhale and exhale. Slowly, he lifted his head.

There were dozens of eyes upon him. His hands trembled, but he did not hide them. He did not avert his gaze even though he wanted to; did not even though even he doubted Pontmercy’s words. Because he had to win this case.

He had to, in order for a precedent to be set such that Valjean could be exonerated. This was for Valjean’s sake, not his own. He held onto that thought tightly.

“Your honour, ladies and gentlemen,” Pontmercy continued, his voice low and quiet. “I rest my case.” 

Frey, Javert noticed with the desperation of a man needing distraction, looked as if he wished to stand and applaud.

***

As per the usual procedures of the Cour de Cassation, court adjourned immediately after the prosecution’s argument. The trial would continue in seven days: depending on the judge’s decision, there would be further arguments, or the judge would deliver his pronouncement.

Javert reminded himself of these facts so he would not give in to the nervousness under his skin. It was a strange thing, he thought; terribly strange for him to not _know_ what the law would decide. Even stranger for him to realise that the law itself seemed to be in the hands of a single man, one who might be fallible like any other.

His last trial had not made him nearly so nervous, nor had it been nearly so memorable. In fact, it had passed so quickly it seemed almost a dream.

Immediately, he pushed away the rising urge to return to that emptiness. There was too much for him to do; too much for him to experience. Too much to _live for_.

He barely had a moment to dwell on that thought when Pontmercy exited from the courtroom. Valjean, himself, Cosette and M. Gillenormand had been waiting for him as he handed M. Chabouillet’s new testimony to the judge.

“Did I…” the man was practically stumbling. Valjean reached past Javert’s chair to steady him with a hand on his arm. 

Pontmercy shook his head, rubbing a shaking hand over his face. “Did I do okay?” he asked, sounding so uncertain that he turned back into a boy again.

“You did _amazingly_ ,” Cosette told him, wrapping her arms around his neck. She kissed his cheek, and her smile was wide and brilliant. “I’m so, so proud of you.”

“Yes,” M. Gillenormand nodded as Pontmercy dazedly wrapped an arm around his fiancée and buried his face into her hair. “I’ve seen many trials and many arguments, Marius, and that’s one of the most impassioned and logical I’ve seen.”

Red started to creep up Pontmercy’s face. “That’s…” he sputtered. “Cosette helped-”

“Even if she did,” now Valjean was joining in, hand squeezing Pontmercy’s elbow, “You delivered it magnificently.”

Blushing fully now, Pontmercy ducked his head. He seemed to put a great stock on Valjean’s opinion for some reason, because he turned his eyes to the man and gave him a watery smile. “Thank you, Monsieur.”

His eyes travelled from Valjean to Javert. He squeezed Cosette’s waist just once more before he peeled away, straightening as he looked into Javert’s eyes.

“Did I…” he hesitated.

“Look,” Javert said, interrupting before he could fumble with words like he didn’t inside the courtroom. “I don’t agree with a lot of what you said. But…” his lips quirked into a wry smile. “What does it matter to the law what a man thinks of himself, right?”

Reaching out, he grasped Pontmercy’s hand, squeezing it lightly. “Thank you.”

The words seemed to ease something in Pontmercy, because he sagged where he was standing. “There’s no- no need to thank me at all,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “Thank _you_ , Monsieur. Thank you again.”

He barely got the words out before Cosette and M. Gillenormand moved even closer, the former hugging him tight and the latter clasping a hand on his shoulder. Pontmercy looked half-drowned beneath them, happily so, and Javert nudged at Valjean.

“Go ahead,” he murmured. His eyes were fixed on the doors of the courtroom: there Frey was, dressed in his perfectly-pressed clothes, his pen tucked behind his ear. 

Valjean followed his gaze. “I should,” he began, making a motion at the chair.

“I can handle it,” Javert interrupted. “The ground’s flat enough, isn’t it?”

There was a moment when Valjean looked as if he was going to protest further, but then he nodded, stepping around Javert’s chair and going towards Pontmercy. As the small family congregated and spoke to each other – most of the words praise towards the man whose face now resembled more tomato than human – Javert wheeled his chair backwards and headed for the courtroom doors.

Frey was waiting for him there. He gave Javert a crooked smile before walking behind the chair, taking hold of the handles without pushing it,

“You’ve got yourself a hell of a lawyer there, Javert,” he murmured. Javert had managed to cure him of his habit of addressing him as ‘Inspector’ a few weeks ago. “Where on Earth did you find him?”

Javert snorted. “I didn’t find him,” he said. “That’s Fauchelevent’s future son-in-law.”

“What?” Frey leaned over, his upside-down face comical with his widened eyes. “That’s Cosette’s Marius? I thought he’d be…”

“More of a dolt?”

“Well,” Frey hesitated, his lips twitching. “More idealistic, was what I was going to say.”

Snorting again, Javert shook his head. “I’m not here to talk about Pontmercy,” he said dryly. Lifting his eyes up, he met Frey’s gaze squarely. “What are you doing here?”

_And where did a schoolmaster of a school held in a nigh-condemned building find the money to buy clothes like these?_

Before Frey could answer, a shadow fell over them.

Javert tipped his head back. His neck protested – he was usually tall enough to never had to look up at anyone, and that was one of the reasons why he hated being in this chair – but it was ignored when he realised who it was.

Tholomyés. Somehow, Javert couldn’t find himself surprised. His hands tightened involuntarily on the chair.

Noticing the motion, the man’s face twisted. He was already ugly – one eye perpetually watering, face wrinkled like crumpled paper, and incongruously white teeth that were clearly dentures – and the scowl turned him even worse, creased the sides of his face and wrung his lips until he looked terrible.

“You’re a murderer,” he hissed, leaning close. “No matter what that little boy lawyer says, you’re a murderer, _Inspector_.” On his tongue, the title sounded like a curse. 

When Javert didn’t react, didn’t flinch, the man drew back and straightened. He raised a fist and shoved it an inch from Javert’s face.

“I’ll have you destroyed for this,” he growled. “I’ll have you killed. I’ll have you _shot_ in the head until you… you…” He trembled.

This was the man who caused a miscarriage of justice. This was the man who raised a son who did such a terrible thing to Azelma. Yet Javert could not find within himself any kind of righteousness, any kind of anger. He had only pity as he watched Tholomyés’s eye watered even further and tears slipped down his cheek.

“Monsieur, I…” he hesitated for a moment, pushing down his pride, and pressed on. “I’m sorry for what I have done. I know that does not—”

“You _dare_ to apologise?” Tholomyés yelled, his voice rising. “You _dare_ to think that’s enough? You _killed_ my son!”

“I know, and I—” Javert was interrupted as hands suddenly grabbed his chain. With a swiftness that belied his weight, Tholomyés wrapped the metal links around Javert’s throat, and _pulled_.

He choked. Stars burst out from his eyes, his own fingers scrabbling at his neck. But the chain bit too tight. _Frey_ , he remembered. Frey was beside him, so why wasn’t he doing anything?

When had Javert wanted anyone to do something when someone tried to kill him?

There was the sound of clicking footsteps; then, a sharp _smack_ of flesh on flesh. Hands wrapped around his shoulders, catching him as he fell forward. Javert caught a flash of tanned skin.

“He’s already injured!” That was Cosette’s voice, thick with tears. “He’s terribly injured and, Monsieur, I know you’re grieving but that’s no reason for you to have done what you have! That’s no reason at all!”

“Javert,” Valjean, worried, right next to him. “Javert, are you alright?”

His hands flailed. They landed on Valjean’s on his neck, stopping him from taking off the chain. Slowly, with more effort than it surely required, he blinked open his eyes.

Valjean was kneeling next to his chair, their hands tangled together with the chain. A little distance away, Cosette’s fists were by her side, and she was glaring at Tholomyés with a ferocity he hadn’t thought she was capable of. As Javert watched – vision wavering, gasping slightly – she stared him down until he turned around and stormed off in a huff.

“Pity that the hall was almost empty,” M. Gillenormand’s voice said, sounding contemplative.

“And you!” Cosette whirled on Frey, Pontmercy’s hands fruitlessly trying to hold her back. “What were you thinking, Monsieur, standing there and doing nothing?”

Javert really wanted an answer to that too. He lifted his eyes.

Frey smiled. It was a dark, cruel thing. Gloved hand raised and tapped the bridge of his glasses. “I don’t need glasses, Mademoiselle,” he said, each word slow and deliberate.

Camera-glasses. And here Javert was, thinking it was part of his disguise as a student. He huffed a breath that would be a laugh if not for the pain in his throat.

“Bastard,” he gasped out.

Dipping his head, Frey bowed low, acknowledging the comment. “Sometimes,” he murmured, soft enough just for Javert’s ears. “One must do nothing in order to accomplish a greater purpose.”

He straightened again. “Good day, Messieurs, Mademoiselle,” he greeted. He turned to exit the Cour, but paused. “And M. Pontmercy? That was a brilliant argument.”

Pontmercy looked pleased for a moment before hastily rearranging his face back to anger when Cosette glared at him.  
_  
_ They watched as Frey exited.

“Who is that man, Cosette?” M. Gillenormand asked. “His face… it nags at my memory.”

“He’s a schoolmaster and no one of any significance,” Cosette huffed. She turned back to Javert, eyes turning worried behind her glasses again as she knelt down beside Valjean.

“Monsieur? Would you let me…?”

Javert tipped his head back. Small, gentle fingers ran over his throat, skimming below the metal collar.

“The skin will bruise badly, I think,” she said, biting her lip. “But there’s no harm done. It’ll heal faster if the collar isn’t constantly weighing on it.”

“It will only be seven days more,” Valjean said, placing a hand on her shoulder. His eyes remained on Javert. “Seven days until it’s taken off, never to be put back again.”

Javert looked at him. He couldn’t find the words to agree, no matter how much he wanted to. So he simply nodded instead.

“Seven more days,” he said instead.

No matter what the judge would decide, he knew he would accept it in full.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the PTSD I warned for in the beginning is for both Marius and Javert. 
> 
> And I did say that Book III is where all of my plot points come back together, right? And that Frey is a plot device OC? /runs cackling into the night.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert is judged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Book III Chapter Three: Justice Done**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Nothing, except- please _don’t_ kill me.

It was only yesterday that the doctor had given the orders for the cast to be replaced by a metal-and-plastic brace – one that went from the juncture between Javert’s hips and thigh and down to his heel, making shoes impossible and every step click loudly on the ground – and a cane, but Javert had insisted on going to the shelter with Valjean anyway.

“We don’t know what else Tholomyés is planning,” he had argued. His voice might still carry a hint of a rasp – from the bite of the chain – but it was strong, nonetheless.

“And I’d rather you not be caught off-guard.”

Valjean had looked at him, then deliberately down to his chest and leg. Javert shrugged then, fighting down the urge to scowl. “Even if I might not be much help with the fighting now,” he had said, “I’m still better than you are at spotting men with ill intent.”

That had garnered him a chuckle. Javert would have been irritated if it had not been immediately followed by Valjean’s agreement.

There had been a larger crowd at the shelter than usual. Not just those who needed help, but a small crowd of gawkers who seemed to only be there in order to ascertain Javert’s existence for themselves. He would have minded if Clarisse hadn’t taken that chance to solicit donations: when they left, the donation box was so well-tended that it’d had to be emptied twice.

Much of it had been due more to Clarisse’s clever insinuations about ‘entrance fees’ than any inherent kindness in the hearts of men.

They were returning home from the shelter now, walking slowly with his cane tapping on the ground with every step and the metal on his heel echoing the sound. It hadn’t been particularly difficult – the hardest part had been climbing the stairs down the house at Rue Plumet.

When they reached the gate, Javert caught Valjean’s eyes. There was sweat dripping down his brow, and he wiped at it off before he smirked. “I was right: I _could_ do it.”

“You were wrong too,” Valjean said, returning the smirk with a small, pleased smile of his own. “No one attacked me.”

“I’m not going to let you go alone until all this is settled”

“Well, the trial will be over tomorrow,” Valjean shrugged. “After that, I can’t really control what you do, can I?”

He had been at this for the past six days now, constantly mentioning that Javert’s freedom was just on the horizon. And, for the past six days, Javert had bitten his tongue, stifling himself so as to not crush Valjean’s hopes.

Still, he didn’t want him to be too disappointed either. So he caught Valjean’s arms before he could move towards the main house, tightening his grip a little.

“The saying goes, ‘don’t count your chickens before they hatch,’” he said quietly. When Valjean looked at him, he sighed. “Look, I don’t know what the judge’s decision would be, and I’d rather not have you raising your hopes for something that might not happen.” Pausing, he swallowed.

“Or might never happen.”

Valjean froze for a moment. He let out a heavy breath, almost a sigh. “Monsieur le Président is a just man,” he murmured.

“He is a lawful man,” Javert corrected.

Biting back a sigh, he shifted his hand on his cane so he could drag a hand through his beard. “You said that the law is a tool, and it is. But… it is a tool that changes according to the eyes that look upon it; a tool with a strength that depends on the hand of the man who wields it.” He tipped his head back, staring up towards the darkened skies.

“You think it will be just if I am freed. I do not. But the hand around the tool of the law is neither yours nor mine, Valjean. It belongs to Monsieur le Président, and I…” He chuckled, a quiet, bitter sound. “I no longer have my faith in the judgment of chosen men.”

Valjean didn’t speak for long moments, his own hands shoved into his pockets and a pensive look on his face.

“I cannot give you my faith,” he said. “Only…” he turned around, hands reaching for Javert’s pocket. He drew out the rosary, the one Javert had kept with him since the hospital, the one he found himself running his fingers over each night, marvelling at the smooth roundness of the beads in comparison to the one he had before.

“Will you have faith in Him instead?” Valjean said, lifting his eyes. “Will you remember, no matter what happens tomorrow, that he Lord always has a plan for us?”

“Once, I knew what that plan is,” Javert said. “I was sure of it. But now…”

There was a plan. _Lead him to joy,_ Fantine had said, and showed him flowers blooming amongst the blood of the alley. But Javert still did not know the path he should take. This path he was on was by Pontmercy’s paving instead of his own. Even if this appeal managed to set a precedent strong enough to exonerate Valjean – something that would surely bring him joy – Javert would only be the tool instead of the hand wielding it.

Not that he would mind it; he would mind nothing if it would give Valjean the justice he deserved. But he could not help but wonder: Had he not changed enough from that unthinking arm of the law, no more than the gun he had held? Was he supposed to return to that?

He had no answers for Valjean; none even for himself. So he shrugged.

“Javert,” Valjean began, but he was interrupted when the front door of the house opened.

“I knew I heard your voices, Messieurs,” Azelma said. She was smiling slightly, an expression that lit up her eyes and creased those cheeks that now looked less gaunt after two weeks of proper food. “Why are you still standing there?”

“We were talking,” Javert said. He tugged on the rosary still in Valjean’s hand, slipping it back into his pocket before he started to climb the steps again. 

“Cosette and M. Marius are here,” Azelma told them as she stepped back from the door. “They had been telling me again about the trial, and showing me some holographic videos of it.”

The smile did not waver. Javert caught her eye, and she nodded, slightly. Her hand reached up to tug at her hair.

_“Why didn’t you tell me?” Azelma demands, her eyes shining with tears that she wipes away hastily. “Why didn’t you tell me that M. Fauchelevent is related to that… that…”_

_It is Cosette and Pontmercy’s first visit to the house since Azelma has moved in. She took one look at the two of them, Cosette leaning against Pontmercy’s shoulder and him smiling at her, before she fled up the stairs and started to throw her things together._

_Valjean has carried the chair – with Javert still in it – upstairs and left the two of them alone. Now he is at her doorway, and completely lost._

_“I didn’t know you knew them,” he says, confused._

_“They are…” Her breath hitches. “That man… my sister Éponine loved him. She really did. She used to get into so much trouble with Mom and Dad because she was following him and his friends around, but she told me she didn’t care because she got to spend time with him. And… And I think she died at the barricades because of him too._

_“She died for him and he doesn’t… he doesn’t… he’s with someone else and I hate them both!” She buries her face in her hands, sitting down on the bed. “I hate them both and I wish they were-”_

_Before she can complete the sentence, Javert has wheeled forward, pressing a gentle hand over her mouth. “You don’t mean that,” he says, and flinches when her eyes widen at the harshness of his tone._

_He sighs, letting his hand fall back to his side. “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it is that you should not hate anyone before you get to know them,” he says quietly. Which then lands one in a dilemma, of course, for it is so much more difficult to hate a man you understand._

_“But he… he never loved her. And he- and both of them- they don’t_ care _that she’s dead. They don’t_ care _!”_

_“Azelma,” Javert says, reaching out and placing a hand on her shoulder. She stops, tears running down her cheek, and sinks back to the bed when he nudges at her._

_“Pontmercy – that boy – he once told me about a friend,” he says. He doesn’t know why he’s defending him – new maturity and fire or not, Javert still doesn’t like him much – but he suspects that this is what Azelma needs, and he will give it to her._

_“He said that he admired her, for she had a cause she believed in.” Biting back a sigh, he wishes that he has more he can say; wishes that he is_ better _at this._

 _“She believed in_ him _, Monsieur,” she says, voice small. Her head drops down, and her shoulders start to shake. “She believed in him, and she died for it.” That voice grows even smaller, barely loud enough to be heard._

_“She died for it, and he’s still… he’s still….”_

_Ah. Ah, so that was what this was, then. Javert had more experience with this than trying to comfort a girl about her dead sister._

_Wheeling himself even nearer, he wraps an arm around her thin shoulders. A slight tug has her moving, half-sprawling awkwardly over his chair._

_“Hating someone for being alive and happy does nothing,” he says quietly. “It doesn’t make the guilt you feel for being alive disappear, either.”_

_Her breath hitches. Her hands clench his shoulders, nails digging through the shirt._

_“Azelma,” he strokes her hair lightly. “It’s not your fault. Whatever you’re thinking now, it’s not your fault.”_

_That is true: Javert has never met anyone more blameless than this girl. He cannot even blame her for being in the alleyway; not after what he has seen of her father and her fear of him._

_Slowly, she starts to sob. Minute sounds escape her, tiny things almost recognisable as “Éponine” and “gone” and “why”. He strokes through her hair and holds her close. Slowly, she starts to calm._

_Her breath shudders out of her, and she slumps even further against him. “They’re all gone,” she says. “They’re all gone. Mom, Dad, Éponine… Even Gavroche. They’re all gone.”_

_Javert stills. That name… the boy who denounced him at the barricades is her brother? That_ child _who died? He bites back his questions; they can wait for another time._

_“You still have your brothers,” he says instead. “They’re still here. And they depend on you.”_

_He does not say that she has him as well. He does not know how she will take it; does not even know how to name the aching affection in his chest and the overwhelming protectiveness he feels._

_She raises her head. Her face is a mess: tear-splotched, cheeks unevenly flushed. But she is smiling, wiping at her eyes._

_“I do. I lost them too, but I found them again, and…” she takes a deep breath. “I do.”_

_Closing her eyes, she leans against him. “I’ll… I’ll go down and talk to him. And her too. I’ll do that.” Her small hand clenches over his shoulder. “Just… in a while? Let me stay here a while?”_

_Javert nods, letting her hair run through his fingers again. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and tries to not make it seem more than it does._

_“Yeah,” she says. “I know.”_

__Now, he cocked his head. “Did you change your mind?”

She had admitted, rather sulkily, that she liked Pontmercy and Cosette both, but she was sure that she would eventually change her mind.

“No,” she huffed, coming over and taking his arm. It was, Javert noted distantly, almost the same kind of pose Cosette would take when walking beside Valjean. “They’re… good people.”

They started for the kitchens slowly. Valjean had already gone in to greet his daughter and future son-in-law, and Javert felt no need to hurry.

“You should’ve let me come to the trial,” Azelma sighed. “Cosette slapped Tholomyés, but _I_ would’ve punched him.”

Javert gave her a sideways look. “Getting arrested for assault won’t help matters,” he said dryly.

“The circumstances would’ve made it defence.”

“Hearing Pontmercy talk about law does not make you a lawyer.”

Azelma opened her mouth, then closed it suddenly. Javert blinked, following her gaze.

Right in front of him, in full 3D hologram, a man was being strangled by a chain. It was himself: Javert blinked.

The spherical projector stopped spinning when Pontmercy lunged for it, nearly jarring the table against Valjean’s hip.

“I didn’t think you were that morbid,” Javert commented.

“It’s not- I was-” Pontmercy dragged a hand through his hair and sighed.

“That wasn’t a video,” Valjean clarified for him, his lips twitching. “It was a news channel.”

“What?”

Cosette straightened, placing her hands on her lap. She cleared her throat theatrically. “An anonymous source has provided us with a recording of an assault taking place in court last Thursday,” she said, impersonating a newcaster’s impersonal tone. 

Valjean snorted, and Pontmercy shook his head. Cosette’s mouth twitched into a grin. ‘Anonymous’, right – every person in the room, even Azelma, knew exactly who had taken that recording. 

“The assaulter has been identified as Felix Tholomyés, a lawyer currently defending the judgment of the now well-known murder case of previous-Inspector Javert,” Cosette continued. “Neither he nor Marius Pontmercy, the prosecuting lawyer, have offered comment.”

Javert raised an eyebrow. Pontmercy shrugged.

“I was going to say something about the unfairness of someone in a high position assaulting an injured man,” he said. “But Cosette convinced me otherwise.”

“It’ll be better for people to come to their own conclusions,” Cosette said. “Whatever Marius may say, people will still believe and see what they want to.”

“You,” Javert told her, “would make a better lawyer than him.”

Pontmercy nodded vigorously, while Cosette ducked her head and blushed.

“Yes,” Valjean said, sounding thoughtful. “I think you would, too, Cosette.”  
_  
Women believed to be as capable as men._ Frey’s words, from so long ago – barely two months – came back to him. Javert’s eyes narrowed, and he jerked his head towards the hologram projector.

“Can we trust him? Frey, I mean.”

Every eye turned towards Valjean; the one who knew that man longest.

“I don’t know,” Valjean admitted. “He… there’s always something odd about him, I think.” 

“What do you mean?” Pontmercy asked.

“He has books I have never seen before, even during,” he hesitated, “a time when I had better access to books than most.” Montreuil, Javert filled in mentally. “I’ve tried to ask him where he got them from, but he never gave me a straight answer. I think- I _guess,_ that he takes them from his university.” 

Slowly, Valjean rubbed a hand over his scalp. “He started up the school around four years ago,” he said. “That’s what Clarisse told me when I asked her about him after he invited me to teach.”

Azelma spoke up. “I tried asking around about the school after I heard you were there,” she nodded to Javert. “But apparently no one knew just where he came from. He just popped up one day, bought the building, repaired most of it himself, and started teaching.”

“What does he teach himself?” Cosette asked.

“Math and history,” Javert told her before Valjean could. He rubbed at his beard. “He went into a spiel about a time before the civil wars when I first met him.”

“ _What_?” Pontmercy was standing up, eyes wide. He opened his mouth and closed them. “I… That’s _impossible_.”

Javert stared at him. “Why?”

“There are no books about the times before the civil wars,” Pontmercy said. He pushed away from the table, walking around the room agitatedly. “Not even in the universities. They were all either destroyed during the wars or,” he hesitated, “burned after the unification. It’s one of the few things that used to get Combeferre completely worked up, because he believed deeply that everything used to be so much _better_ before.”

He dragged his hand through his hair before whirling on Javert. “What did he tell you?”

Javert frowned, trying to remember. Fortunately, he’d always had a good memory. “Food for everyone. Free education. Subsidised healthcare. And…” he glanced at Cosette, then Azelma. “Women, equal to men.”

Pontmercy grabbed at a chair blindly, slumping onto it. “That’s… that’s precisely all of the plans Combeferre had made,” he said softly. “That’s what he thinks- he _thought_ we deserved. That’s…”

“Who _is_ this man?” Cosette asked, voicing what they were all thinking.

“I don’t know,” Valjean said. He rubbed a hand over his scalp again. “I’ve wanted to ask, so many times, but I never did because… all men have their scars and secrets.”

“ _You_ would’ve made a terrible lawyer,” Javert told him, rolling his eyes. Did Frey know that as well? Did he recognise that quality in Valjean when they met, and thus he had allowed him to teach in his school?

“He has an agenda,” he said grimly. “‘A greater purpose,’ he told me.”

Silence settled over the room again as this sank in.

“A red hat and a red scarf,” Cosette said quietly. “That was what he wears whenever I see him, except last week.”

“But he was not at the barricades,” Pontmercy rubbed a hand over his face. “And I haven’t seen him even once at the Musain.”

He took a deep breath. “ _How_ does he know anything before the civil wars?”

Javert’s mind suddenly turned south, towards the glittering heart of their country. He shoved himself away because it surely _couldn’t_ be.

“It doesn’t matter how he knows,” he said brusquely. “Only this: can we trust him?”

Pontmercy opened his mouth, but Valjean was already shaking his head.

“I know not what he is planning,” he said thoughtfully. “But he has done us no harm.”

“So far,” Javert added, resisting the urge to slap a hand over his face. “He has done us no harm so far.”

“He didn’t do anything while M. Javert was being hurt,” Azelma piped up.

“But he recorded the video and sent it to the news channels,” Cosette pointed out. “By doing that, he’s making the country question Tholomyés’s actions, which is… a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Still… what did he do that for?” Pontmercy chewed on his lip. “And if… if he had access to those books, then why did he not show them to… to us?” He didn’t mean anyone in the room, Javert knew.

Valjean shook his head again. “We can’t find the answers like this,” he said firmly. “I can’t influence your decision, but I’m inclined to trust him, whatever his plan is.” 

“You’re inclined to trust everyone,” Javert sighed. He tipped his head back, looking at the ceiling. “But you’re right – there’s nothing we can do right now. Still, we must watch him. See what he does.”

“I can help,” Azelma offered. “I can ask him. Not directly, of course, but… indirectly.” She paused, then gave a sheepish laugh. “Not that I know how to do that.”

“Well, it’s easy, actually,” Cosette smiled. She reached out a hand. “I can teach you if you like, Mademoiselle?”

“It’s Azelma,” the other girl corrected. She smiled shyly. “I’d… like that, if you don’t mind, Mademoiselle.”

“Cosette.”

Before Valjean or Pontmercy could start making soppy eyes at the girls’ budding friendship, Javert sighed. A little overdramatic, perhaps, but necessary.

“Now that we’ve settled _that,_ what are _we_ ,” he motioned to the other two men in the room, “supposed to do?” 

“Well,” Cosette said, a mischievous grin curving up her mouth. “I suppose you can sit and wait.”

When Valjean burst out laughing, she looked so pleased with herself that not even Pontmercy could continue sputtering for long.

Javert’s lips twitched. He pretended to polish the head of his cane.

Sometimes, he still wasn’t quite sure how he ended up like this.

***

None of them could stay on the topic of Frey for long; not when Pontmercy had to return to his task of preparing possible further arguments and Cosette to helping him. Azelma went with them after Javert encouraged her with a nudge.

Javert had followed Valjean back to his room. He did not kneel with him as he prayed – he couldn’t, with the brace in the way – but merely sat on the bed, silent and still as he allowed Valjean’s quiet voice to wash over him. It was strange, and would likely always be, to hear someone pray for his sake.

He closed his eyes, listening to Valjean’s voice, running the rosary over his fingers. One bead for every prayer, utterly ruining the usual procedure. One bead and no words, because he had never prayed for another person in his life and learning it seemed too difficult.

But Valjean had not said a word, not even when he finished. He only sat next to Javert on the bed, leaning against his shoulder, arm wrapped around his waist. His hand curled around Javert’s, fingers tangling together with the rosary’s string as they waited for morning.

Morning came. Neither of them slept and yet there was no tiredness in Valjean’s eyes. Javert himself couldn’t feel tired even if he tried – there was too much buzzing underneath his skin, a mixture of unnameable emotions within his veins.

The walk up the stairs of the Cour de Cassation was shorter now that he no longer had to lean on two men. Instead, Valjean was beside him, one arm on Javert’s elbow to steady him with every step. Cosette and Pontmercy were behind, whispering to each other. They had sent Azelma up earlier, they said; if she was to speak to Frey, then it would be better if he did not see her come in with them. It might allay his suspicions long enough for her to ask the questions she needed to.

Even though there was part of him worried for her, Javert couldn’t concentrate. There was a larger crowd than a week ago: more vultures with their camera-glasses glinting like sharp beaks; gawkers who came to mock whoever lost; well-dressed students in their suits who made a beeline towards Pontmercy.

Tholomyés’s entrance would have been missed if not for the judge immediately preceding him. The gavel banged. 

The black-uniformed, black-visored guard came to attention next to the judge’s stand. “Silence in the court!” he called out.

Immediately, the whisperings ceased. The sharp-eyed gaze of Monsieur le Président swept over the room, lingering upon the students for a moment before he folded his hands atop of his stand.

“The court is not a classroom,” he said, slow and deliberate. His gaze turned towards the men and women who were neither students nor reporters. “Neither is it a circus.

“I beg you to keep this in mind, ladies and gentlemen.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Javert watched as Valjean’s hands clenched on the railing of the audience’s stands. The knuckles were slowly turning white.

“A week ago, the defence and prosecution came to present their arguments. The presecutor has procured a piece of evidence that, he argued, presented the events outlined in the first trial in a new light. He saw fit to remind this court that the law differentiated between manslaughter and murder.”

He paused. Pontmercy, standing at the prosecution stand, winced. Tholomyés’s smile widened.

“The defence told us that death caused by a hand of a man was still a death and must be punished.” Those eyes narrowed slightly. “Now, before I announce my judgment, I must put forth a question: _why_ does the law differentiate?”

Javert’s searching eyes finally found Azelma. She had been leaning in and whispering to a man. Despite the new clothes – a long-sleeved, worn pullover and jeans without holes – he recognised Frey immediately. It wasn’t difficult; not when Frey seemed to have frozen at the judge’s words, the only movement in him the narrowing of his eyes.

“Judges and lawyers often argue about the law without thinking about the history behind it,” the judge continued, his voice even and calm. “This has been habit for us throughout these years: what purpose is there in searching, much less questioning? No, only the word of the law seems to matter.”

His lips twisted. 

“Words, as we have seen from the marvellous performances the week before, are malleable things without their roots.” Raising his hands, he folded them across his mouth. “And what are the roots of our laws?

“They come from a bygone age; one which none of us here remembers.” His eyes flickered towards M. Gillenormand, just once. “No matter how long we have lived. But perhaps it is long past time that we remind ourselves.”

The court held its breath. The judge’s eyes turned away from it, looking down at the papers on his stand. A hand, one of those that shaped the law that Javert had spent so much time following, picked up a single piece.

“I shall now pronounce my judgment upon the case. This decision will be final; no any further appeal will be entertained.”

Beads and string in Javert’s hands. When had he taken the rosary out? It didn’t matter; he clutched it now, trying to make-believe that some sort of warmth remained in the glass. 

It was not freedom he needed or wanted. It was…

“The trial of Javert, previous Inspector of the Parisian Police, is unlawful.” He held up a hand to forestall any reaction. Javert noted that Tholomyés was slowly turning red. “It was unlawful from the start. If the prosecution had looked upon the case with care, they would have realised that the charge should have been voluntary manslaughter instead of murder.”

Javert’s breath stopped in his throat. 

_You could have fought for a different charge_ , Valjean had told him once, long ago. _Voluntary manslaughter, for example. It fits, especially since you were defending someone else at the time._

 __“However, it remains that Javert is guilty. No matter the words we use to describe it, no matter how we attempt to mould their shapes, the facts remain: he killed a man, and that is a crime.” He paused. “The usual penalty for voluntary manslaughter is five years in prison.”

Slowly, he placed the paper back on the stand. His hand was still raised; the room was still silent.

“To send Javert off to prison will be lawful,” he said. His eyes scanned the room. Then it stopped on Javert himself, a weight as heavy as the collar on his neck. The gaze was clear and searching. Nothing like Lady Justice’s blindfolded eyes.

“Will it be just?”

Only when silence had taken reign over the room and crowned itself king did Javert realise that the question was aimed at _him_.

He swallowed. Was he… was he being allowed to _choose_ between the prison and the collar? The law was a tool. It was a knife. And now it was being offered to him, the blade naked and pointing to his throat. It was up to him to decide where to cut.

“No, your honour,” he said. Despite the softness of his voice, it echoed. “I deserve to remain a slave to serve out my sentence.”

“Why?”

“The prison does not hold only murderers,” he said, steeling himself, refusing to avert his gaze. “It holds, too, men who have committed far lesser crimes: theft, breaking and entering, fraud, or the breaking of parole. To send me back there…”

Javert hesitated. His fingers tightened on the rosary, beads digging into skin and flesh.

“It will be unjust to the men within. It is unjust to look upon a murderer and say, he is the same as a thief. It will be unjust, for murderers might kill again, but a thief’s hands have never been stained with blood.”

“So we must allow you to walk free?” the judge arched an eyebrow.

“There is no freedom on the streets when I wear this, your honour,” Javert replied, his voice still even as he tapped the collar. The bruises from Tholomyés stood out starkly, he knew – a startlingly livid blue-green.

“To wear the prison upon my neck is what I deserve.”

Seconds passed. Slowly, deliberately, the judge nodded. There was the barest hint of a curve at the corners of his eyes.

“Yes. It is.” He nodded, then turned back to the audience.

“The final judgment is this: Javert will be a slave for five years. The time will be calculated according to the date of his original sentencing. If he does not commit further crimes by the end of those years, he will be free.”

His hand fell.

A sudden, loud sound: a _crack_ , like wood splintering. Javert knew what it was; knew whose strength had caused it. But he did not turn around. And he did not turn as Tholomyés jumped from his seat, shouting; as the audience burst into roaring whispers, a susurration of words and breaths that rose and rose like a tidal wave.

But it did not drown him. It did not, for his feet were steady now. 

The judge stood from his stand. He left the courtroom surrounded by guards, dogged by Tholomyés. Javert watched him.

To have the charge stand would not be just. To be freed would not be just either. There was too much blood on his hands, too much blood in the alleyway. What he had done so far was not nearly enough to clear it all away.

Five years. Four and then some. A drop in comparison to the ocean of his sins, perhaps, but it was lawful.

It was just.

The law and justice had finally met. Even though it was simply one trial, nothing more than a brush of the hands, they had _met_. They were one step closer towards Valjean’s exoneration.

Five years of wearing a collar around his neck was a small price to pay for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would love to free Javert, but it doesn’t make any sense given the circumstances. He _had_ killed a man, after all.
> 
> Please don’t kill me. If you kill me, I can’t post the next chapter. And the entirety of that chapter is Valjean’s reaction. (Check again the note on the first chapter. Check the current wordcount. You really, really don’t want to kill me, right?)


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert and his master find an equilibrium.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Book III Chapter Four: Captive Men**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Explicit depiction of sexual relations between men; heavy discussion on the nature of consent; a hint of D/s. (In other words: I’ve finally earned both my pairing tag and the rating at the same time.) Also, internalised homophobia due to religious beliefs, though not long lingered upon.

Frey looked as if he wished to approach as Valjean led Javert out of the courtroom. But Cosette had stepped in first, stealing Azelma from Frey’s side and ushering all of them – including Pontmercy, who was surrounded by reporters – back into the car. 

“Any comments will have to come at a later time,” she had told the vultures firmly, her hard gaze belying her gentle smile. “Let us all contemplate Monsieur le Président’s remarks regarding the history of the laws and the nature of justice first.”

In the car, the three young people had spoken to each other in low tones: Cosette and Pontmercy bracketing Azelma, entreating her and her brothers to stay with them at the Gillenormand Manor. Cosette kept sneaking glances at her Papa, and every glance seemed to urge her on further, disallowing Azelma the option to refuse.

Javert could not remember any of the words: they were vague things, washing over and past him like the gentlest of breezes. His world had narrowed to the heavy collar on his throat, the hand at the end of his chain, and the storm brewing in those dark, lidded eyes.

The car stopped in front of the house at Rue Plumet. Valjean stepped out of it, and Javert followed without needing a tug of his chain. Three pairs of eyes lingered upon them, weighted with worry, before Pontmercy pressed the series of buttons that would take them back to the Gillenormand estate. The car started once more, quietly slipping down the road.

They were left alone: the two of them, slave and master, captives of the law walking free with chains dragging behind their feet.

Silence settled upon them: stifling, oppressive, nearly thick enough to choke; nothing like what it had been just the night before. The beep of the gate opening could not cut it. Javert swallowed back the explanations forcing himself to wait even as his grip tightened on his cane.

He contented himself with watching Valjean: those tense shoulders, the knotted muscles of his neck, the fists shoved into his pockets. The deliberateness of every step, his limp more pronounced than ever.

When they reached the hallway, Javert placed his cane in its usual place atop the shoe shelf. He opened his mouth.

Valjean turned suddenly. He did not meet Javert’s eyes, only reaching out with both hands towards his neck. They were gentle and tremulous as he unhooked the chain. The metal links spilled over his hands, half-alive silver, and Valjean stared at them before he flung them away. 

There was a loud _crack_.

“ _Why_?”

Javert did not, _could_ not, reply. He turned to pick up the chain. There were splinters on the door from the impact. He shoved the thing into his pocket.

“It is just,” he said, his voice low and even, his eyes averted “It is lawful.”

“Five years in prison would be lawful,” Valjean said. His hands shook even more. His eyes were fixed upon Javert’s chain. “Five years as a slave is not.”

“Would you rather have me in jail, then?” the words slipped out even before Javert could think. “Isn’t it you who implied that being a convict is little better than a slave?”

_I know the meaning of those nineteen years a slave. Of the_ law _._

__Valjean shook his head immediately. “No. No, I- What I said then… Javert… look. A convict’s death is seen to be unlawful. It will be murder.”

He swallowed hard, dark eyes casting down. “But a slave… a slave’s death is nothing but the destruction of _property_. And you _chose_ …”

_I chose a jailer who will look upon me as if I am a man; a jailer who had taught me how to be._

“But I am a man,” Javert said quietly, hastily stifling those words. “As long as it is you who holds my chain, I am.”

“Are you really?” Valjean asked. His fingers brushed the bruises peeking above the collar on Javert’s throat. “Are you human when you wear this?”

“You treat me as one.” He took a breath, lifting his eyes to meet Valjean’s. “And so does everyone who lives in this house.”

“But you will not stay here,” Valjean shook his head “There are few eyes on the streets who will look upon you as human.”

“That is just,” Javert repeated. “I have not treated those I am supposed to protect as human.” _I did not see you as human until the barricades._

His hands clenched into fists, nails digging into his own thighs. “The tables are now turned. I learn what it is they felt. That is justice.”

“There is no justice in a man being treated like he is nothing more than property.” There was a twitch growing on Valjean’s jaw.

Javert shook his head. “There is,” he insisted. “I do not remember the face of the man I killed. I did not remember his name until I was reminded of it. Even now, he… he is nothing more than a faceless corpse to me.”

His hands had risen to brush over the healing bruises on his neck. Valjean caught them, pushing them away as his hands slipped down and curved over the back, fingertips brushing over the small hairs at the nape. 

“You have already paid for the death you caused,” Valjean said, voice still soft. His hand was hot, warming the metal of the collar further, turning it into a furnace. “When you saved Marius, you already paid life for life.”

“The saving of a life does not repay causing a death,” Javert said, his lips twisting into a bitter smile. “The scales of justice are not weighed that way. The law does not work that way.” And it should not.

“Besides,” the smile grew. It was surely grotesque, but Valjean did not turn away. “My sins do not begin with that death either.”

“Your sins,” Valjean repeated. He closed his eyes, leaning in slightly. His fingers were digging into the skin beneath the collar. “You asked me to forgive myself, but you have not done the same. I have forgiven you; is that not enough?”

“No,” Javert said, because that was true, and he did not lie. “You forgive, Valjean, but it is not justice to forgive. It is mercy. And the law _has_ given me mercy; it has given me a chance to make my penance and earn it.” He reached back, covering Valjean’s hand with his larger one.

“This is penance. Part of it, at least.”

Valjean opened his mouth, but Javert shook his head again. He leaned forward, forehead touching Valjean’s.

“Will you accept this easier if I tell you that I made this choice out of selfishness? I chose this collar rather than the other because it leads me towards instead of away from you.”

Those dark eyes were sceptical upon him, but Javert did not turn away. He did not lie; he would never lie. That, too, was the truth.

“But you are not beside me,” Valjean choked out. He took a breath, and the tremors of it shook his entire body. “You’re three steps behind.”

“I’ve chased you through these years,” Javert said, keeping his own voice steady. “Even now, I’m following your light down the true path of justice. This is fitting.”

Valjean was shaking his head again. Before he could pull away, Javert cupped his face with a hand, leaned in, and kissed him.

It was a soft thing, barely a brush of the lips. It was a breaking of an agreement, a half-promise that stretched between them. _Not until_ , Valjean had said, and Javert had agreed even though he hadn’t wanted to.

But there would be four years and then some until the collar was removed. Javert was a patient man, but he did not _want_ to wait.

Hands tightened on his shoulders. Valjean made a sound, a strangled sob, before he pushed Javert hard, walking him backwards until there was nowhere more to go; until the wood of the door was digging against his shoulderblades. Valjean’s mouth opened, gasping, and Javert took his chance, wrapping his arm around him, pulling him upwards and deepening the kiss.

It was clumsy; it was awkward. Valjean’s tongue was a wet, thick thing between his teeth. It was like nothing he had ever done, nothing he had ever wanted to do before this man. The heat of Valjean’s body was making his blood rush, his head spin, and he was more breathless than he had ever been.

How long had this been looming between them? Did it start at Toulon, when Javert had looked upon Valjean in his collar and chains; had known his strength and wanted him? Or was it only at the barricades, when Valjean had cut off his bonds and, with it, the pillars of his world?

He did not know. He didn’t need to know. There was only this: Valjean’s hot breath in his mouth, liquid ink that slid into Javert’s lungs and marked the insides; Valjean’s heart, beating fast and staccato next to his own; Valjean’s scent, sun and earth and growing things.

“ _Valjean_.” Was that really his voice? So full of a thousand things he had grown to know he was capable of only in the past months? Need, desire, and something that pressed against his ribs, making his wood-heart grow even though he still feared to name it?

There was a moment, a slight sound, then Valjean was pulling away. He stumbled backwards, eyes wide and darker than they had ever been. His lips were swollen and spit-slicked, some of it lingering on his beard. His cheeks were flushed and his breaths came in harsh pants that echoed around them.

He was beautiful. In that one moment, he was so beautiful that Javert could not help but reach out for him.

But Valjean stepped backwards. “I can’t,” he choked out, shaking his head. “You can’t… you _can’t_ …”

Javert let his hands fall back to his sides. “What can’t I?”

Valjean looked at him with such terrible anguish in his eyes. “You can’t say no,” he whispered.

Of course. Javert clenched his hands. His hands: there was a chill there, at the edge. His pocket; the chain. In that one moment, Javert made his decision.

He met Valjean’s eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he took two steps forward. His hand caught Valjean’s wrist. Holding on, refusing to let Valjean push him away again, his fingers brushed against the shackle-scars. Valjean’s breath hitched.

Then Javert fell to his knees. 

It was awkward and difficult with the brace in the way. The metal clicked against the wooden floor. Javert ignored it all and stayed where he was.

Still silent, he drew out the chain with his free hand. Keeping his eyes on Valjean, he opened the hand in his, placing the hook upon it. He tipped his head back and brought that now-trembling hand forward, shifting the fingers until they hooked the chain onto the collar.

“I want,” Javert said, his voice steady and surer than it had ever been, “to say yes.”

Valjean’s eyes were wild. They bore into Javert, staring at him as if he was something he had never expected to see. A drowning man who saw an oasis in the distance; a blind man seeing the sunrise for the first time.

A half-formed memory came to him: an alleyway; Valjean standing above him. A cruel smile on those lips, a beast in those eyes. And Javert: naked, confused want stitched all over his skin, was slammed against the wall, a foot coming down into his crotch, every touch causing shame to rise and crash over him.

It was a dream; it was nothing. Javert licked his lips.

“Will you let me say yes?”

The words seemed to break something within Valjean. With a wordless cry, he lunged forward. The chain was torn from the collar in one violent motion, metal skittering along wooden floors. But Javert ignored it, could do nothing but, because Valjean’s hands were in his hair and Valjean was on his knees next to him, kissing him. Messy and hurried, teeth and lips and desperation, and Valjean was trembling and trembling.

“Say it,” he gasped out. “Say it. Please say it.”

“Yes,” Javert said, his own voice a wreck. “Yes. Yes. Yes, Valjean. Yes. Always and forever, _yes_.”

Valjean cried out again, a tearing sob. He gripped Javert’s shoulder, dragging in close. Their bodies pressed together in every way they could, Valjean’s skin a furnace even through their clothes. Javert made a sound he could not begin to describe, his arm wrapping around Valjean’s back and nails scraping over the scars he could feel through the thinness of his white shirt. 

  
art by [MadMoro](http://madmoro.tumblr.com/post/131872597704/say-it-he-gasped-out-say-it-please-say-it)

“Want you,” Valjean was saying, his words muffled and mangled from Javert’s mouth. “Wanted you ever since Montreuil. Every inch of you, burning so bright with your dedication. I feared you and I wanted you and, _God_ , Javert, when you came to me… when you came to me…”

He sobbed again. Javert didn’t know what to think of this, didn’t know if he could think at all. He only cupped Valjean’s cheek, turning away from that mouth to kiss his cheek, wiping away the tears with his own lips. Moved downwards, blindly, until he could feel Valjean’s pulse beating against his teeth.

“I wanted you but I couldn’t lie to you. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Not when you kept looking at me with those eyes. God, Javert, the way you looked at me… your gaze always on me. Always on me and sometimes I could barely _think_.”

How long had it been since Montreuil? How long had it been since Valjean had kept this inside, the confession spilling out of him only now? Javert couldn’t remember, not at the moment. Not when Valjean was pepping messy, wet kisses on his jaw, his ear, everywhere he could reach.

“Didn’t know. I didn’t know. But you’ve… you’ve haunted me. Throughout the years, I couldn’t forget you.” That was his voice, but Javert had no idea where the words were coming from: only that they were true, true in a way that escaped even himself. “Your kindness, your mercy, your goodness… all of it. I tried to believe that it was all a lie, but you didn’t stop haunting me. And at the barricades…”

“You were there,” Valjean gasped out. His hands were starting to peel off Javert’s clothes, trying to get the t-shirt off without breaking their touches. “I went in and you were _there_ , bloodied and bound, head lowered. It would have broken my heart if not for your eyes. They were still proud. So proud, so sure…”

“Sure about the wrong things.” Javert leaned back, letting Valjean pull the shirt over his head before they fell upon each other again. “Until you broke my world and set it back to rights again.”

Valjean stopped. He pulled away for a moment, his eyes dark upon Javert. He reached out with a shaking hand, fingers splaying over Javert’s face before creeping down, brushing past the collar around his neck to rest upon his still-bandaged chest. Slowly, he moved his hand until he was touching the bullet wounds that were beneath.

Javert’s breath stopped in his throat. All words fled him. He stared at Valjean, letting the silence stretch between them.

When they leaned against each other again, the kiss was slower. Still clumsy, but more an exploration than a crash of their lips. Valjean’s hand was warm on his ribs, warm on his neck as his fingers curved once more around the collar. Javert had somehow unbuttoned the shirt, and he slid his hands beneath cloth now, feeling Valjean’s skin for the first time. He felt the scars now, the too-smooth skin, the ragged edges of lashes badly healed.

“How can you still want me after what I’ve done?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Valjean said. He pulled back, both hands cupping Javert’s face, looking into his eyes. “I’ve asked myself a thousand times, told myself to stop. And yet I still don’t know. I still can’t.”

Leaning in again, he exhaled over Javert’s lips. “You said I broke your world. How could you want me after that?”

Javert laughed, his shoulders shaking. He turned his head and pressed a soft kiss against the palm of his hand. “How can I not?”

He closed his eyes. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about and haven’t told you.” He swallowed. “You’ve been everything good in my life.”

Valjean’s breath hitched; Javert felt more than heard it in the ripples of his back. “Even before?” he asked.

“Even before,” Javert nodded. “As mayor, you showed me that a man can be purely good,” he said quietly. “Despite the secrets you hid, despite what you said of yourself, you showed me that. Though I refused to see it then.”

A bitter smile threatened his lips. Valjean kissed it away before it could take form, and Javert shuddered just once before he forced himself to continue.

“Then you showed me that I was wrong,” his thumb brushed over the edge of Valjean’s mouth. “I would be Hell-bound if not for you.”

Valjean froze at those words. He closed his eyes.

“Don’t say that,” he said, voice low and hoarse. “You’ve always been a good man, Javert.”

“It was due to your fear of me that you have kept yourself hidden for so many years,” Javert said. He bit his lip, but it was too late to swallow back the words.

Looking at him for a moment more, Valjean leaned in and kissed him again; the barest brush of the lips. “You have chased me and I have haunted you,” he murmured. “In doing so, we have remained constants in each other’s lives through the years.”

Javert could do nothing in response to that than to kiss him again. Cautiously, he nipped at Valjean’s lip, and Valjean arched towards him, humming under his breath.

“We are two old fools,” Javert said finally when they gave themselves room to breathe.

“Mm,” Valjean nodded. His lips quirked upwards, full of mirth. “Old indeed, because my knees are beginning to ache.”

Javert blinked. Ah – they were still kneeling on the floor of the hallway. His own mouth twitched, and he stifled a laugh against Valjean’s mouth.

“Your room, then?” he murmured. A heartbeat passed; he gathered his courage. “It has a bigger bed.”

Valjean blinked at him before he ducked his head. There was the faintest blush on his cheeks before he stepped back, standing up, and offered a hand to Javert. “It does,” he said.

Despite the steadiness of the voice, there was a tremor to his hand as Javert took it. He ducked his head down, bracing himself on Valjean as he stood. The moment he did, the injured leg burst into pins and needles, and he stumbled forward.

Catching him with both hands around his shoulders, Valjean frowned, looking concerned. “Should I…” he waved a hand vaguely towards that leg. Javert knew what he meant, and shook his head.

“You’ve carried me over the threshold of this house enough times,” he said, a little dry. “Let me walk.”

Blinking, Valjean sputtered for a moment. Javert let his lips curve up a little more, and that made Valjean laugh, his body shaking within Javert’s arm. Unbidden, he found himself kissing those lips again, drawing that laughter within his lungs.

Valjean’s hand lingered on his face as they pulled back. Javert turned his head, pressing a kiss to that rough, callused palm.

“We should go in,” he said. He didn’t pull away. “Or we’re going to end up standing here until morning.”

“I won’t mind that,” Valjean smiled. “But your leg might differ.”

Javert snorted, dismissing that very limb. Valjean laughed again, taking him by the arm. They walked towards Valjean’s bedroom with slow, steady steps. 

There was something nudging at the back of Javert’s throat; something he could not bear to give name to. He ignored it, focusing on nudging Valjean to sit down on the bed.

With one hand on Valjean’s thigh, he sank back down to his knees. Immediately, Valjean’s eyes widened, and he was reaching forward.

“You don’t- Javert, get up.”

Javert shook his head. He looked at his own hands, trembling on Valjean’s still-clothed thigh. He swallowed. “I said yes,” he said, proud that his voice was even. “Will you… will you let me show you what exactly I meant by that?”

Valjean’s hand slid over his neck, then his chin. Javert followed it, lifting his head up to look at the other man. Valjean was trembling, teeth sunk into his lower lip. Javert closed his hand on that wrist, lifting it up and pressing his mouth to the scars there.

“This is not a debt repaid,” he said quietly. “This is not a service I wish to render.”

He kissed the scars again. “This is my own selfish desire.”

“I have never known you to lie,” Valjean said. He closed his eyes. The breath he took shuddered through his body. “I… alright. Alright.”

Strong, muscled thighs beneath his hands; thighs that could run and climb over walls. Javert leaned forward, trying to keep himself steady as he ran his mouth up from the knee. Valjean trembled beneath him, but he did not move. Javert kept his eyes lowered, stifling down his uncertainty as he mouthed the juncture between hip and thigh.

He could feel Valjean’s desire hot against his cheek. It stretched the cloth of his trousers, each crease obscene with arousal. Every single hitch in Valjean’s breathing resounded in his ears. His hands trembled as he raised them to the buttons, slipping them out of their holes. Slowly, he lowered the zipper.

“I’ve never…” he swallowed. Such a foolish thing to admit right now. But he could not help himself; not when he could see the slight wet patch on Valjean’s underwear, turning the cloth transparent so he could see the head of his cock beneath.

Leaning in, Javert opened his mouth. He drew his lips over his teeth and carefully, carefully, mouthed against the bulge.

Valjean groaned above him. His hips jerked. Javert’s breath tripped over itself, his blood rushing southwards. He darted out his tongue, and moaned when he tasted cloth saturated with the bitterness of Valjean’s want.

“ _Javert_ ,” Valjean said, sounding strangled. His hand slipped into Javert’s hair, trembling there as if he was unsure if he could hold on.

“Guide me,” Javert said, no longer knowing what was coming out of his mouth. “Show me how to give you this. Show me how to give you the pleasure I want to give.”

Another groan. Valjean’s hand tightened in his hair, the other settling on his shoulder. Javert found himself moved, his mouth pressing harder against Valjean’s crotch. Against his cock and the heavy-hanging balls beneath.

The scent was overwhelming. Musk and salt and- Javert lost his words. His hands scrabbled at the waistband of Valjean’s underwear, pulling it down. The hard length bumped against his teeth when it was freed. It was heavy, tinted a purplish-red, and thick. A vein pulsed angrily at the base. Javert could no longer control himself.

He leaned in and licked from base to tip.

Valjean cried out. His hand clenched, grip nearly hard enough to pull at the strands. After a moment, it loosened, and a thumb brushed over the spot in apology.

“Please,” he said. “Javert, please…”

“Tell me what you want,” Javert heard himself say. He could barely recognise his own voice, so choked it was. “Please, tell me what you want.”

“Your mouth,” Valjean said. There was the sound of a sharply-indrawn breath. “Your hands. _Anything_.”

Javert nodded. He turned his head, kissing the wrist so close to him. Then he steeled himself. It couldn’t be too difficult; he had heard plenty of people speaking of this.

He opened his mouth and took Valjean inside, trying to slide downwards. The head of Valjean’s cock bumped the back of his throat, the thigh beneath his hands trembled, and Javert tried to push more of it down.

Immediately, his body rebelled. Javert choked, pulling back as he gasped for breath, Valjean’s cock slipping obscenely out of his mouth.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was more difficult- sorry. I’m… I’m not good at this.”

A hand cupped his face. Javert looked up, knowing that his face was flushed with embarrassment. But Valjean only stroked a thumb over a burning cheek, and his smile was soft despite the darkness of his eyes.

“I won’t know,” he said quietly. “I just… Javert. Whatever you do gives me pleasure. That you want to do this is…” He swallowed. “That already gives me pleasure.”

Closing his eyes, Javert nodded. He steadied himself on Valjean’s thighs. This time, when he took Valjean’s cock, he was careful to only let the head past his covered teeth. Slowly, keeping more attention to his throat than he ever had in his life, he pushed his own head down further and further, inch by inch.

Valjean’s taste gathered on his tongue. Bitterness with a hint of something almost sweet beneath. Javert found his own trousers getting even tighter, but he ignored it for now, one hand lifting from Valjean’s thigh. He stroked the base slowly, then further downwards, fingers curling over the heavy balls and thick, coarse hair; touching with hands what he could not touch with lips and tongue.

“Javert,” Valjean was gasping out. “Oh… oh, Javert.”

Tentatively, he hollowed his cheeks, sucking lightly on the head, feeling it press against his palate. Valjean cried out, hips trembling without thrusting, and Javert did it again. The insides of his cheeks pressed against the length in his mouth, feeling every ridge and bump of the skin. 

Even without his mind’s urging, his own hand was at his trousers. He fought against button and zipper and waistband until he had his own cock in his hand, stroking hard even as he continued to suck. 

_Worship_ , a distant part of him noted. Javert groaned, because he knew it was true: on his knees like this, with Valjean’s cock in his mouth, his cock in his own hand. He sucked a little harder, pulling back before pushing down again. The ends of Valjean’s hairs tickled the tip of his nose.

The sound of his own name echoed in the room, a litany that was surely blasphemous, and Javert found himself dizzied by all of it.

Time slipped away from him entirely. He didn’t notice it passing; didn’t even notice the way his jaw was starting to ache. He was focused too much on the way Valjean’s voice started to break, the words turning more and more mangled, syllables spilling from his lips without end. He cupped a hand around the hip, urging Valjean to thrust once he had enough confidence.

When Valjean did, his cock brushed the back of Javert’s throat. He swallowed hard again, pulling back a little, tongue licking up the length. He wished he could slide Valjean within him entirely; wished he could feel his cock stretch his throat and press against the collar through layers of skin. 

The thought made his balls tighten, drawing up. Javert fought the urge down, his hand tightening on the base of his own erection as he sucked even harder.

“I’m going to- Javert- I’m going to-” Valjean’s words were a babble, barely comprehensible.

Javert nodded, his moan echoing through the caverns of his mouth.

“You don’t have to- I’m going to- _Javert_!”

He drew more of Valjean inside, and squeezed his hip. His hand worked harder around himself.

Valjean stilled completely. Then there was a sudden rush of sound, an inarticulate cry as his hips jerked upwards fully. Javert barely had time to pull back before he felt thick bitterness land on his tongue. He sucked hard, drawing as much as he could into his mouth even as he felt some of it spill down his lips.

When Valjean finished, Javert pulled back. Keeping Valjean’s spent inside his mouth, he squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead against a strong thigh before he stroked himself even harder, drawing a nail down the length of his own cock.

The hand in his hair stroked over the strands. A thumb slid under his collar. “Javert. God, Javert…”

Javert swallowed, feeling the salt-bitterness of Valjean’s come run down his throat. Like that- just like that- surrounded by Valjean’s scent and voice, his taste thick in his mouth, Javert came.

He shuddered hard, gasping for breath as the hand on his neck continued to touch him. A finger brushed over his trembling throat, and Javert groaned out loud.

If he could stay there on his knees forever, he would. But Valjean was already nudging at his shoulders. Javert lifted his head, eyes bleary. There was something sticky at the corner of his mouth.

Unthinking, he wiped it off, and brought his thumb between his lips.

“You liked that,” Valjean said, his voice full of wonder. “You _liked that_.”

Javert raised his head. He kept his eyes on Valjean as he licked his lips, cleaning up every single drop of Valjean’s come. Deliberately, he wiped his thumb over the corners of his mouth, gathering bitterness before he licked it all off with small darts of his tongue. He heard the tiny hitch in Valjean’s breathing.

“Yes,” he said. It was ridiculous given what he had done, but heat rose up to his cheeks again. “I… I liked that.”

The confession unlocked something inside him. In that one moment, he knew exactly what it meant when he wanted to fall to his knees the moment Valjean placed that collar on his throat. 

Valjean looked conflicted for a moment. Then he nodded to himself. Hooking a finger into Javert’s collar, he dragged him upwards.

This time, the kiss was not soft. It was not an exploration. It was a _claim_ , Valjean’s tongue deepening the marks made by his spent in Javert’s mouth. Javert moaned, hands clawing on Valjean’s shoulders, and he gasped again when a strong arm wrapped around his waist, stilling immediately.

This was… he had a thousand names for this, all of it depraved. He refused to think about them. _Want_ would serve well enough, he decided. _Desire_ could, too.

Something slipped out of his pocket. It clacked against the floor.

Javert's eyes drew immediately to it, and he knew Valjean's did as well.

It was the rosary. The beads gleamed dully in the light of the moon coming in front of the windows. Javert's breath hitched. Beside him, Valjean froze.

He fell back to his knees, the metal of his brace loud against the floor. Javert pulled himself inwards, feeling indescribably filthy. The light reflecting from those glass beads condemned him. He closed his eyes, biting the inside of his cheek. There was still salt on his tongue but he could not even begin to feel nauseated by it.

God, what had he _done_? Lead Valjean to joy, Fantine had said. What had he done? His desires… _his_ desires… God, he had led Valjean straight to hell.

Forcing his eyes open, he tucked himself back in, his fingers trembling. Why was he not content with kisses? Surely he was depraved. Of course he was depraved. 

There were no small flowers in the alleyway. Only vines with sharp spikes, drawing more blood from the bricks.

What had he done?

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them,” he murmured under his breath. “Leviticus 20:13.”

He swallowed hard, and wiped at his mouth. Then, even harder. “I’m-”

Before he could finish his apology, Valjean grabbed him by the arm. Javert nearly fell over, but there was a hand on his neck, steadying him and resting their foreheads together even as Valjean pulled him back on the huge bed.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal,” Valjean quoted to him, his voice low against Javert’s jaw.“

“Love never faileth,” he continued, turning his head and pressing a kiss to Javert’s jaw. “But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.”

Javert was trembling. But Valjean’s hands on him were steady, holding him still, anchoring him. His eyes were bright and dark both, a light that shone brighter than the rosary’s cross.

“And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

This time, it was his throat that gave voice to a sob. He squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to steady his voice as he said, “You missed a few lines.”

“So I did,” Valjean said, sounding amused. His lips brushed the corner of Javert’s again. His thumb, when it slid over the corner of Javert’s eyes, came back wet.

He smiled, small and bright with a hint of uncertainty at the edges. “I did. I still do.”

They were no longer talking about misquoting, Javert knew. He tried to swallow, but the tears found themselves down his cheeks nonetheless. His throat made an inarticulate sound, and he bent forward, burying his face into Valjean’s shoulders as he shook and shook.

Valjean wrapped his arms around him, holding him tight. He kissed Javert’s hair and his jaw. 

“There is nothing wrong with what we have done,” he said, words breath-warm in Javert’s ear. “There is nothing dirty in it, Javert. You have given me yourself, and it is so precious. So very, very precious.”

His hand over his heart formed a shield around the tiny shoot growing out of the still-living core of the old, rotting wood; pouring in sunlight and warmth and sweet air that encouraged it to grow.

Surely… surely the spikes Javert had seen in the alleyway were only a trick of light. There were buds, and they were now blooming.

Javert raised his head, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. His gaze met Valjean’s, and they kissed again. Soft and sweet, Valjean’s tongue running over his lips and teeth. Javert opened his mouth and let him in as he had let him into his heart, and he mapped Valjean’s mouth carefully.

This gentleness broke the last part of Javert’s heart, of his very world. And within the cracking splinters, within the shattered stone, he found the courage to say:

“Faith, hope, love. You have given me all three.”

It was a poor confession. But Valjean was pulling back, and his smile was small and shaky but so, so bright.

“Javert,” Valjean breathed. There were tears gathering at the corner of his eyes, and Javert wiped them away with a careful thumb.

“So have you.”

_Lead him to joy_. Is this God’s mercy? Has he found himself at Pont au Change once more, with the Palais de Justice on one end and Notre Dame on the other?

Perhaps he had. Yet, beneath his feet were not rushing rapids that brought him down towards the darkness of Hell. Yet, when he looked down, there was only light.

At that moment, Javert made a decision: whatever he had given so far was still not enough. Even if he had given himself entire, it was not. 

He kissed Valjean again; as he wrapped his arms around that beloved form and felt himself kissed and held in return. There was plenty more that he would have to give, plenty that he would wish to give. Another trial, and different strings to pull.

But that would be for later. Now… Valjean was kissing him again, holding on to him tightly. 

And this was more than he had ever hoped for. More than he ever deserved.

He would earn it. Every step and every move from now on would be to earn this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I have been using KJV for the Bible quotes. And I know that in KJV, the lines from Corinthians says ‘charity’ instead of ‘love’. I’m deliberately misquoting for my own use.
> 
> I hope that this chapter is worth waiting 80k words for, sob. Aha.
> 
> PS: This was in my original outline: ‘Javert tops when porn occurs because Watts and Joshi.’ What is having control over my own writing, I don’t even know anymore.
> 
> PPS 25 Oct: _Yes_ , the art is amazing. Please go tell the artist it is amazing.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert persuades and is persuaded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Book III Chapter Five: Turning Wheels**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Nothing. Except maybe another OC for plot purposes.

A few hours later, Javert found himself jarred rather unwillingly awake by sunlight piercing his eyes. He could have ignored it, but the warmth by his side disappeared and the bed dipped at around the same moment. Part of him, already too-awake, recognised that this was Valjean’s East-facing room, which meant that it was already sunrise.

He flailed around with his hands, one rising to shield him from the sun and the other grabbing for Valjean’s hand. “It’s too early to be awake,” he slurred, fingers closing around a scarred wrist. He pulled. “Come back here.”

“I’m closing the curtains,” Valjean said, sounding amused and far too awake. 

“Fine,” Javert grumbled, letting his hand drop back onto the bed. “Come back here afterwards then.”

“Yes, yes.”

There was the sound of footsteps on the wooden floorboards. Javert kept whatever part of his mind that could stay awake on it even as he draped his arm over his eyes, wishing he could turn over without wrestling with the brace.

The sun disappeared and the room was cast into darkness again. Javert reached out again, grabbing hold of Valjean’s wrist and tugging him back into bed. Valjean kissed his knuckles before he climbed back in, and Javert removed the arm around his eyes to wrap around broad shoulders, holding him close.

“I’ve never thought I could have this,” Valjean murmured, voice barely a breath in his ear.

Javert smiled muzzily. He kissed whichever part he could reach – Valjean’s temple – before he squeezed the hand in his.

“Not going anywhere,” he yawned.

Valjean made an inarticulate sound. His finger traced over Javert’s collarbone, then, more hesitantly, around his neck, beneath the collar.

Catching that hand, Javert kissed it as well. “Don’t want to go anywhere either,” he added. He squeezed Valjean’s shoulders lightly. “Now go back to sleep.”

A chuckle huffed over his shoulder, and Valjean nodded. Javert let himself curl a little more against him, soaking up his warmth and letting it pull him back down into the darkness.

It was nearly noon by the time he woke up again. He yawned, stretching as much as he could without sitting up, before he turned. Valjean was just blinking himself awake as well, looking bleary, and Javert leaned in and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Morning,” he said, knowing that he probably sounded like a giddy teenager but not really caring. He couldn’t think about his dignity when Valjean smiled at him fuzzily, leaning in and returning the kiss.

He tipped his head up, looking at the clock on the nightstand beside Javert. “Afternoon, actually,” he said. He chuckled to himself softly. 

When Javert raised an eyebrow, he explained, “It’s been a very long time since I’ve slept in this late.”

“Well, neither of us slept the night before last,” Javert shrugged. He untangled himself a little from Valjean, sitting up.

“I didn’t take you to sleep in often,” Valjean said, pulling himself up as well and leaning against Javert’s shoulder.

“It’s not considered sleeping in when I worked graveyard,” Javert pointed out. “This is usually the time when I get _into_ bed.”

“Do you miss it?” Valjean asked, tipping his head up.

Javert paused, considering the question. After a moment, he shrugged again, pulling Valjean closer. “A little,” sighed. “It’s not something I can help, since I’ve done it for almost my entire life.” And there was that little stint of investigation with Thénardier’s letter which lit the policeman’s instincts back up into his blood.

He dropped his head back, looking at the ceiling. “But I have another purpose now, so it’s… it’s alright.”

“Another purpose?” Valjean blinked.

“I’ll tell you after we’re dressed,” Javert told him, pressing another kiss to his temple. It was long past time they had this conversation anyway; he was bad at keeping secrets, and the weight of it was practically dragging on his heels.

Valjean blinked at him again. Then he yawned, rubbing his hand over his beard before he nodded. “That’ll be best, I think.” His lips quirked up into a small smile that brightened his eyes. “Kitchens in fifteen?”

Making a sound of affirmation, Javert kissed the edge of his stubbled jaw, unable to help himself. He climbed out of bed, the metal of the brace clicking against the floor. Looking around him, he picked up the rosary on the nightstand. The beads were cool, and he pressed them tight into his palm as he hobbled out of the room. He picked up his shirt, left abandoned on the floor last night, and went to his room.

He kept the rosary with him as he washed and changed. The weight and temperature had not changed; it did not burn him like it would a heretic even though he knew it should.

Faith, hope and love. Mercy. All these things Valjean attributed to God, and yet Javert knew better the harshness of God’s laws and the terrible punishments He dealt. Sodom and Gomorrah were reduced to nothing; Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt just for looking back; Onan spilled his seed to the ground, and it was judged wicked by the Lord, who killed him; men who lay with men as they would with women were considered abominations in the eyes of the Lord.

Javert looked at himself in the mirror. Here was a damned man: if not by last night’s act, if not by his desires, than by his deeds and his words throughout his life. If he was damned, then so be it. But he would not drag Valjean down with him; not when Valjean deserved all the light and goodness of the world. All of the faith, hope, love, and mercy he gave so freely to others and yet did not know how to give himself.

Closing his eyes, he leaned his head against the mirror. _Lead him to joy_ , Fantine had said. Her voice echoed endlessly in his mind. Was that a hallucination or a true vision?

Joy. There was joy in Valjean’s eyes last night when he looked at Javert; joy in the morning. There was no regret. Javert could not find himself regretting it either. Did it mean that he was on the right path, or that he had become an unrepentant sinner, little better than the man he had been before?

He didn’t know and there was no way for him to find out. He had a conscience now, but it had Valjean’s voice, and it could not lead him towards righteousness or rightfulness.

Pulling back, he looked at himself again. There were no answers writ in either his face or eyes, and he was to no fool to believe there would be any. He shook his head and finished shaving, splashing his face with water afterwards.

If he reined his desires in, if he kept himself to touches and kisses… could that be forgiven? Would that keep Valjean from being mired in the same sin? Perhaps that was the answer.

It was something he could try, at least.

He stepped out of the bathroom, and blinked when he saw Valjean standing at the door. The other man gave him a sheepish smile, holding up a roll of bandages.

“We’ve forgotten about this, I think,” Valjean said quietly. “Do you mind me helping this time?”

Javert looked at the bandages, then into those dark eyes, and wanted to laugh. It had barely been a minute since he made that resolution, and now he found it already tested. But he stifled it down and nodded, walking over to his bed and sitting down on it.

Valjean came over, placing the bandages on the mattress as he helped Javert take off his shirt. The bandages over his chest were a little yellowed from sweat and dirt. Javert turned around, biting hard on the inside of his cheek as Valjean tugged the hook free.

“We’re not in the kitchens,” Valjean murmured. “But will you tell me anyway?”

“You’re no good with secrets,” Javert said, his lips quirking up. He raised his arms and let Valjean wind the bandages free of his body. “It’s ironic, considering how many you’ve kept.”

“It’s precisely because I’ve kept so many that I don’t deal well with them,” Valjean told him, voice wry. He dropped the dirty bandages on the floor. 

Before he could pick up the new ones, however, Javert caught his hand. Their eyes met, and Valjean stepped in between his spread thighs. Javert reached up, tracing the curve of one cheek with his hand.

“You,” he said. “My new purpose is you.”

Valjean’s eyes widened.

“I want to free you,” Javert continued, forcing his voice to remain steady and even. “I want to give you the justice you deserve. I want to make sure that I never have to use ‘Fauchelevent’, or any other name, to refer to you outside of this house. Or even to Azelma.”

His fingertips stroked down Valjean’s cheek. He splayed his hand over the number on his chest, hidden beneath the shirt.

“There are four years before I will live without this collar,” he continued in the same tone. “Four years in which I will still live under my own name. But you… you have lived with a collar for longer than that. A collar that can’t be seen, but is there, nonetheless. That is not just, Valjean.”

“Javert, I…” Valjean faltered. He squeezed his eyes shut, and Javert nudged at his shoulders, urging the man to lean against him.

“When Pontmercy first came to me to ask my permission to send in the appeal, I told him he should appeal your case instead. He told me he couldn’t, because he needed to win mine first, in order to set a precedent.” Javert smiled tremulously, turning his head and kissing the side of Valjean’s jaw. “It’s the only reason why I agreed.”

“I’ve never…” Valjean shook his head. “I was guilty. I was _guilty_.”

“So am I.” Before Valjean could protest, he pressed on. “Yet you still believe that I deserve to be free because I was protecting someone. You stole the bread because you were desperate to save a life. Is that intention not honourable? Is it not innocent?”

“I don’t know,” Valjean said helplessly. “I don’t…”

“Shhh,” Javert hushed him, rubbing a hand over his shoulderblades. “I’ve told you once that I can’t exonerate you for your crimes. Even without this collar, I was a policeman, not a judge. But I _can_ help you. So let me do it.”

Valjean didn’t speak. His face was buried in Javert’s shoulders, and he was trembling.

“Let me do it,” Javert repeated. “I’ve chased you over so many years. It’s because of me that you had to keep yourself hidden. It’s because of me that you kept yourself isolated. So let me do this.”

“Javert,” Valjean lifted his head. Tears beaded on his lashes, and Javert wiped them away. “There is no debt to be repaid.”

He smiled. “I’m not doing this because I want to repay a debt,” he said gently. “I’m doing this because it is unjust to force a good, honest man to live like a thief under names that are only alibis.”

“But…” Valjean closed his eyes. He shuddered hard, one hand rising to splay upon Javert’s chest, above his healing ribs and the bullet wounds. “If there is to be a trial, then I will have to confess. What will become of you, then?”

Javert paused. His fingers wrapped around Valjean’s, squeezing them hard. “I have an idea,” he said, his lips quirking up slightly. “It will kill two birds with one stone, and I’m sure you won’t like it.”

“What is it?” Valjean blinked.

“Transfer the ownership of me to Frey,” Javert said. Valjean opened his mouth, but Javert shook his head.

“We need to figure out what his agenda is,” he pointed out. “If he agrees to the transfer, then I will have a much closer look at what he’s doing. If he doesn’t, well… his reason will tell us plenty.”

Valjean frowned. “You don’t believe that he’s a good man,” he said. “And yet you’re willing to do this?”

Javert smiled wryly. “I don’t trust his intentions because I have too little information,” he said. “That’s not the same thing.”

Straightening back up, Valjean picked up the bandages. He looked at them, brows furrowing even further. “You’re right: I don’t like this.” He sighed. “If he refused, what are we to do then?”

Dragging his hand through his hair, Javert fought down the sigh. That was the problem, wasn’t it? If Frey wasn’t an option, then Javert didn’t have many left: Pontmercy was out of the question, because it would cast suspicions on his desire to defend Valjean – it would seem like he was bribed; there was no point asking Cosette, Azelma, or Clarisse either, because women could own limited property and slaves were not included. Even M. Gillenormand wasn’t an option, for the same problems as Pontmercy.

In fact, the only choice remaining was… Javert nearly laughed.

“We can ask M. Chabouillet,” he said, lips twitching. “Right after you confess to him.”

Valjean’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I don’t think he’ll refuse,” Javert said. He rubbed his chin, then tugged on the ring of his collar. “Not if I speak him to first and convince him to my point-of-view.”

Sighing, Valjean drew his hand over his scalp. “We don’t have to do this,” he said. “Or… not now. We can wait until you’re free.”

Javert snorted. “People’s memories are short. In four years, they would have entirely forgotten about this trial and Monsieur le Président’s words about the circumstances of crime.” He shook his head. “No, it has to be done now.”

“There is too much danger to you,” Valjean told him quietly. He turned towards the bathroom, grabbed a wet cloth, and started to carefully draw it over Javert’s chest. 

“It’s one that I’m willing to take,” Javert said. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to focus and not linger on the sensation of Valjean’s hand over his skin. 

“I don’t… I…” Valjean rubbed his hand over his face, looking frustrated. “I never wanted anyone to risk themselves to me.”

“The risk isn’t that great,” Javert pointed out. He obligingly raised his arms to let Valjean wrap the bandages around his chest. “Don’t you trust Frey or M. Chabouillet to be decent men?”

Valjean sighed. “I do,” he said. “But when I trust someone, it’s for my own sake. Never someone else’s. Much less…” his eyes met Javert’s, and his lips curved into a small, melancholy smile. “Much less someone who is as precious to me as you are.”

Javert’s breath caught in his throat. He swallowed, ducking his head down. “You’re…” he swallowed. “You’re precious to me too,” he said haltingly. “That’s why I want to do this.” 

A long silence descended on them as Valjean busied himself with the bandages. Javert’s teeth sunk into his lip to keep himself from speaking.

“There is so much that can go wrong,” Valjean said. “The appeal might fail. I might be jailed again. And I don’t know what will happen to you then.” 

He stopped, letting out a shuddering breath. Hesitantly, Javert caught his hand, squeezing it lightly.

Then Valjean lifted his eyes to his. He gave Javert a tiny smile. “But I can’t deny that to be free is what I want, selfish as it is.”

Only this man. Javert cupped his cheeks in both hands, tugging him close until their foreheads touched. “It is what I want as well,” he said firmly.

Valjean nodded. His hand closed around Javert’s wrist. “I know,” he murmured. “And… who am I to deny you what you want?”

Javert opened his mouth, then closed it. If Valjean thought of this as indulging Javert’s selfishness, then so be it. Javert could live with it, as long as Valjean would be free in the end.

Besides, he knew that any attempts to convince Valjean to be selfish would be futile.

He nodded instead. “Let me have what I want,” he said, curving his hand around Valjean’s neck. “Let me see you a free man. Let me call you ‘Valjean’ outside of this house without needing to look around me.”

Pulling back, he met Valjean’s eyes. “Let us be honest men. Both of us.”

No more lies. No more pretences. No more calling Valjean by a false name just for his protection.

“Honest men,” Valjean repeated. His body shuddered hard, just once, before he nodded. His lips found Javert’s, and he kissed him slow and lingering.

“Yes.”

***

It was evening when there was a knock on the door. Javert blinked, exchanging a glance with Valjean before he sighed, starting to pack up the chess set they had been trying to play with – a gift from Cosette years ago, Valjean had said, even though he didn’t quite know how to play and Javert had never learned either.

Valjean opened the door. As Javert watched, five young people rushed in, nearly bowling Valjean over.

Azelma was carrying her youngest brother, and Cosette the other. 

“We have exciting news,” Azelma said, grinning slightly. She leaned over her brother’s head to kiss Javert on the cheek. “We’ll let M. Marius tell it while we put the boys to bed.”

Cosette giggled, resting a hand on her fiancé’s arm. Pontmercy looked as if he was nearly buzzing out of his skin with excitement.

The moment the girls went up the stairs, he burst out: “Tholomyés and Listolier have come under formal inquiry!”

Javert blinked. “What?”

“There’s going to be an investigation on their handling of their previous cases,” Pontmercy said. He started pacing from one side of the room to another, hands flailing around himself. “And that’s not the most exciting part.”

He stopped, and turned to the two older men with a broad grin. “The orders for the inquiry came from above.”

For a moment, Javert wondered what God had to do with this. From the odd look crossing Valjean’s face, he seemed to be thinking the same.

It was Valjean who recovered first. “From the Monsieur le Président?” he asked, sounding tentative.

“No, no,” Pontmercy shook his head so hard that Javert worried that his neck was going to break. “It’s from-” He stopped again, completely overcome with his excitement.

Javert rolled his eyes. He reached out and grabbed Pontmercy’s arm, dragging him to the couch. “Sit down,” he barked. “Talk properly.”

Pontmercy sat. He continued to vibrate, practically bouncing on his seat.

“It came from Our Second Napoleon himself,” he said, breathless with awe.

“What?” Valjean asked, sounding utterly shocked. Javert concurred.

“Yes,” Pontmercy said. His grin widened even further. “Our Second Napoleon himself. And he even gave a new speech this afternoon!”

This time, it was Javert who gave voice to, “ _What_?”

There were endless repeats of speeches by Our Great Napoleon and Our Second Napoleon playing on a certain channel every single day. The more famous and memorable ones repeated on the news channels at ten in the morning. But it had been _years_ since there had been anything new. For the past four years or so, after his sister’s death, their leader seemed to have gone into some sort of hiding. 

Javert hobbled over to the armchair and dropped down on it. “He made a speech,” he said in disbelief. “A _new_ speech. For this case.”

“Yes,” Pontmercy nodded.

“Why…” Valjean shook his head. “I don’t deny that this case is important, but surely… surely it is not enough to catch the attention of someone _that_ high above?”

“I don’t know why he has, but he did,” Pontmercy said. He started digging into his pockets. “I recorded it.” He drew out the holographic projector and placed it on the table, reaching over to switch it on.

“Wait,” Javert said, driven by his policeman’s instinct that was screaming in his mind. “How did you know to record it?” How did Pontmercy even _knew_ about the inquiry coming from the leader himself?

“Someone called Grandfather’s house,” Pontmercy said carelessly. “That person said that there might be ‘something interesting for me to see’.” He made air quotes with the last few words.

Javert stared. “And you didn’t think to _ask who it was_?” he croaked out.

“What does it matter?” Pontmercy blinked at him. He shrunk back slightly at the force of Javert’s glare.

Of course Pontmercy didn’t think it mattered: he was a lawyer, not a policeman. But, despite himself, Javert could not forget his years of training and experience. He dragged his hand through his hair.

There were no doubts as to who it was who called Pontmercy. It was Frey; it _had_ to be Frey. Frey who knew beforehand that Our Second Napoleon was going to make a speech and that it would be broadcasted; Frey who had enough connections to the news channels to make them play the video of Javert’s assault.

Was he a reporter? No, that couldn’t be the answer: it didn’t explain the school, or where he came from. It didn’t explain how he knew about the history of the country before the civil wars.

Once again, Javert’s mind turned southwards. He shook his mind free of the notion. There was _no way_ that could be true.

“Let me show you the speech,” Pontmercy was saying. “Maybe we can find some answers there.”

Before he could switch on the projector, there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

“The boys are asleep,” Cosette announced. She walked over to the couch, dropping down next to Pontmercy. “Have you shown Papa and M. Javert the recording, Marius?”

“Not yet,” Pontmercy said. “I’m about to switch it on now.”

Azelma walked over and perched herself on one of the arms of Javert’s chosen chair. Without looking, Javert grabbed onto Valjean’s sleeve and tugged him towards the other one.

Pontmercy switched on the projector.

The scene was familiar: the interior of Our Second Napoleon’s study in the Castle Fountainebleau. Spacious, bright, and covered with gleaming screens.

Our Second Napoleon was seated behind his large desk, his hands folded atop it. He looked almost unchanged from his last broadcasted speech four years ago: there were just a few more streaks of white in his grey hair.

“Citizens,” he said. The screens flickered on, repeating the man’s face. The speakers echoed the words until it rose into a boom. “It has been some time since I have last addressed you. Despite what some of you might think, I did not disappear out of grief, fear, or such paltry things.” His lips twisted into an ugly smile. “I am Napoleon, and Napoleon does not fall prey to such foibles.

“No. I have taken a step back as a test of your faith and your loyalty, citizens. A test that some of you have failed. Failed so terribly, in fact, that I must once again return to remind you of the sole principle that has allowed our country to have peace for the last decades.”

There was a hand on Javert’s arm. He blinked, looking up. Valjean shook his head at him, and Javert suddenly realised that his nails were digging into his own palms.

He unclenched his fists, slowly.

“It pains me to remind you, but it seems that I must. The principle is this: Each person has their own place in this country, in this world. We are all cogs in a machine that generates peace, citizens. Even I, Napoleon, am merely a cog. I have a role to play. I am your watcher, your guardian. I ensure the peaceful running of this country.”

The smile faded. “Our Great Napoleon, my father and the father of this country, has given his life to ensure peace. He has set down a series of laws that are to be followed. He has given a group of men the privilege to enforce these laws and make sure that they are respected.” His eyes narrowed.

“Yet what do I find now? I find that there are men in these exalted positions who are suspected to have twisted these laws for their own selfish gains. _Twisted_ our laws! Our laws that are set down by _blood_! The blood of Our Great Napoleon; the blood of every single man who has bled for the sake of unification.”

He shook his head. “What is more: there have been more uprisings and rebellions within this past year. Do you all wish to return to the times of the civil wars? Do you wish to return to the blood and muck that my father, Our Great Napoleon, rescued all of you from?”

Leaning forward, he scowled. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and low, turned terrible by the echoes from the screens. “Do you believe now that your little desires are worth plunging this country back into war? Do you believe your _insignificant_ sufferings to be worth wasting the blood spilled? Do you believe that you deserve _better_ than the roles you have been given in this world?” His mouth twisted once more, and he shook his head.

“Your arrogance, citizens, sicken me.”

His nails were digging into his palms again. Javert tried to relax them, but they would not obey.

“There are still arrest warrants out for every single _rebel_ ,” the noun sounded like a curse, “who participated in the barricades. Every person who aided them will be considered a traitor. Every person who decided to take our law to be their plaything will be branded traitorous as well.”

With that announcement, the recording ended.

There was a moment of silence. The projector beeped and stopped spinning.

“He knows nothing about blood and muck,” Javert heard his own voice as if it came from a long distance ahead. “Nothing.”

Valjean’s hand squeezed his arm. “Marius,” he said. “Why did you show this to us? Isn’t a speech like that considered a terrible thing?”

Pontmercy was looking down at his hands. He lifted his eyes. They were blazing. “No,” he pronounced slowly. “No, it is not.”

“Why?” Valjean asked. “Does it not imply that the laws will never be changed?”

“It does,” Cosette answered. She took off her glasses and started polishing them on the hem of her dress. “But, Papa… this will anger people further.”

She put her glasses back on, and her eyes were uncertain and hopeful as she focused on the two of them. “Marius’s grandfather fought in the unification, but that was forty or so years ago. Even the unrest after the unification has faded from memory. So few of us remember the wars, so it seems…” she bit her lip.

“It seems like he is using it as an excuse to put us in what he thinks is our place,” Pontmercy continued grimly. He took Cosette’s hand, squeezing it lightly. “We don’t want war again. None of us do, I think. But we want to be treated like people. That’s all.”

“He’s putting Tholomyés and Listolier in the same position as the rebels of the barricades,” Azelma spoke up. “The same as the rest of us.”

“And that has never happened before,” Pontmercy nodded at her. “Each of us has a role to play, a position given, but it all seemed to be below him.”

There was a word hovering in the air around them. One that had never been given voice; one that had been consciously avoided throughout the years. Javert closed his eyes, and formed it in his mind.

 _King._ A word that was in their vocabulary but considered to be practically dirty, though no one – or few – knew the reason. A word that had never been used in seriousness, only in mockery.

“This is all too much for me,” Valjean said. “All of these politics...”

He shook his head, rubbing his hand over his mouth.

Javert placed a hand over his arm. “I’ve never expected any of it to get this far either,” he said quietly. “I don’t understand how it has. But now that it is done, we must keep going.”

“There needs to be change,” Pontmercy said, low and fierce. “We cannot allow things to carry on this way.”

“It is not just,” Javert said.

Pontmercy looked at him for a moment before he chuckled. He ran a hand over his hair, lips curving up into a sheepish smile. “My apologies, M. Javert. I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just…”

He gestured towards the three men in the room. “All three of us were at the barricades for our own reasons, not for the cause my friends were fighting for. And yet, somehow, we ended up fighting for that cause anyway.”

 _Every man charts his own path to revolution_. Javert smiled grimly. “But not with guns,” he said.

“No,” Cosette said. “But with the same weapons that are pointed towards us.”

Valjean’s body shifted towards him as he turned towards his daughter. “What do you mean?”

Cosette smiled. “Marius’s place is that as lawyer, and he fights with law,” she pointed to her fiancé. “M. Javert’s place was that of a policeman, and so he fights with justice.” The finger turned towards Javert. “Azelma and I, we’re women, so we fight in the background, hidden like the laws say we should be.”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ears. “And Papa,” she smiled, sweet and a little melancholy. “You’re an escaped convict who had been dealt a terrible hand by the law. And you have fought against that by being a good man, the best I have ever known. And you will fight with that same hand and show it to be terrible, won’t you?”

Azelma whispered, “What?” Her eyes were wide on Valjean.

Javert tugged her down. “I’ll explain later,” he murmured to her. “Or you can get Cosette to explain to you.”

She blinked at him. Slowly, her eyes cleared, and she nodded.

Valjean was looking with wide eyes and slack jaw at his daughter. Cosette smiled, standing up. She walked to her father and took both of his hands in hers, bringing them to her chest.

“You were very wrong to have tried to hide things from me, Papa,” she said gently. “How could I have thought badly of you in any way? How could I, when you saved me and gave me so much? How could I, when I have always known your love for me, your goodness?”

She drew her arms around him. “Papa, I would never be angry with you,” she said quietly. “But I _am_ very angry at everything and everything who made you think that I would be.”

Valjean made a choked sound. His arms drew around Cosette, pulling her close. He pressed a kiss to her hair. “Cosette,” he murmured. “Oh, Cosette. My darling, you have grown so much.”

Cosette laughed softly. She kissed her father on her cheek, pulling back slightly. “That’s because I had a wonderful father,” she said. “A wonderful father who taught me how to be good and kind. Who showed me all the wonderful things in the world and deserves them for himself too.”

They smiled soppily at each other. Javert shook his head, looking away.

Azelma was looking at the two of them with envy clear in her eyes. That look pulled at something within him, and he tugged her down until she was leaning against him. She looked at him for a moment before blinking away her tears, smiling a little uncertainly as she embraced him.

Pontmercy looked at the two of them, then back to Cosette and Valjean. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Cosette crooked her fingers at him.

Like a puppy, he went over, and nearly stumbled into her when she pulled him in.

“There,” she said, sounding supremely satisfied. “I have my Papa, and I have my Marius. And now I am happy.”

“By the way,” Javert said, far too amused. “Valjean agreed to let Pontmercy here appeal for his case.”

“But I still-” Valjean started, but Cosette put her tiny hand over his mouth.

“A promise is a promise, Papa,” she teased. After a moment, her smile softened. “Let us save you this time? You’ve done this for us so many times.”

Valjean faltered. After a moment, he nodded, and Cosette’s eyes brightened.

“Is that his real name?” Azelma whispered into his ear. “Valjean?”

Javert nodded.

“Do you think I can call him that?” she asked, sounding hesitant. “In this house, at least? And away from my brothers, because they won’t really understand?”

“You’ll have to ask him yourself,” Javert told her. “But I don’t think he would mind.”

“M. Javert?” Cosette asked. “I’m going to make tea. Will you help me?”

“I can help,” Valjean and Pontmercy offered together.

He blinked. Slowly, he untangled himself from Azelma. “No,” he said, keeping his eyes on Cosette. “Let me do it.” He had a good idea what this was about, and it had nothing to do with tea.

Cosette gave him a bright smile and went into the kitchens. He followed her, closing the door behind him.

“It’s not for tea,” she blurted out the moment the lock clicked. All of the sudden, her steeliness had evaporated, and she looked nervous.

Javert laughed. “I know,” he said.

She looked at him for a moment before turning away. Taking the electric kettle, she started filling it with water.

“I remember you,” she said quietly, staring at the running water. “I remember Azelma too.”

Whirling around, she gave him a beseeching look. “Don’t tell Papa.”

Those two sentences very quickly formed a picture that he was sure would give Valjean an apoplexy. He gave her a wry look. “I won’t.”

“Good. He doesn’t need to worry over me more than he does,” she shook her head. Taking a deep breath, she switched off the water. Javert plucked the kettle from her hand and plugged it in, and she started searching for the tea.

“There were dark roads. The sound of horses. I was… I was running beside Papa, thinking it’s an adventure. But Papa was… he was scared. Nervous, I think. He jumped every time a voice called out the name. I don’t remember the name, but,” she hesitated. “That was your voice, wasn’t it?”

Javert nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

“He escaped just as I was going to arrest him. He went to… rescue you, from the people you were living with. I found him after he took you from them, and I chased him.”

Cosette brought down cups and boxes of tea bags. Her hands rested on the kitchen counters.

“The reason why we went to the convent… why we had to keep moving… why we… that night before the barricades, Papa was so scared…” She turned, her eyes sharp behind her glasses. “He has been running from you, hasn’t he?”

Javert closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“I knew it,” she said, sounding strangely triumphant. “Marius told me: at the barricades, you were there, and so was Papa. You were denounced as a spy, and Papa offered to shoot you.”

“He let me go instead.”

“Yes,” Cosette said. Her feet tapped on the ground as she moved closer, and Javert opened his eyes to see her looking at him with narrowed eyes.

“Papa is kind and very forgiving,” she said quietly. “‘Every person has their own griefs and circumstances,’ he always told me. Most of the time, it’s very easy for me to follow what he says. It’s… easy for me, to be kind.”

She pushed her glasses up her nose. Her gaze never left his. “Do you know why I insisted that Papa took you in, Monsieur?”

“No,” Javert shook his head. He knew the reason she gave, but it seemed that with this girl, that was the half of it, at most.

“You made him laugh,” she said. “But also, I believed that… you knew him. You knew him like I can’t, because he refused to tell me, much less show me. You knew him. And…” She hesitated, and gave him a small, uncertain smile.

“I think even then, I knew that he loved you. Not in the way that he loved me, of course, but he loved you nonetheless.”

Javert shook his head. “I… I don’t deserve it, I know.”

“That’s not what I’m getting at,” Cosette said, amused. She cupped his cheek gently. “Monsieur, Papa loves you. And I can see that you love him too. But I can’t help but worry about Papa, you know? After what he tried to do, hiding away from me and Marius for our own good… I can’t help but worry.”

 _Ah_.

“I’m…” he swallowed. “I don’t think I can promise what you want me to promise, but I can try.”

She nodded. “Papa told me that you’re a man of your word,” she said, sounding contemplative. “That you never lie. But Monsieur…” She smiled at him sweetly.

“That’s not good enough.”

He swallowed hard.

“I promise I won’t hurt him intentionally,” he said. He sighed. “I can’t promise that I never will, because there is, like you said, a lot of history between us. But if that’s still not enough, then… I promise that I will do my utmost to make him happy, in every way I can.”

Cosette’s eyes rested on him for a moment, searching. On the counter, steam started escaping the electric kettle, but she didn’t move. Javert tried not to hold his breath.

After a moment, she seemed to have found what she was looking for, because she nodded and moved away. Javert turned off the stove, and poured the water in the cups when Cosette had spooned in the leaves.

“I’ll hold you to that, Monsieur,” she said. She looked at him with steel in her gaze. “I’ll hold you to that promise.”

He gave her a wry smile. “If I break it, then I deserve whatever you decide to do.”

She burst out laughing at that, shaking her head. Her curls fell over her shoulders, and she brushed them again as he picked up the tray.

“No, Monsieur,” she said. “I won’t do anything. I’m pretty sure anything I imagine would not be nearly as terrible as what you would do to yourself.”

Javert blinked. This girl was a force to be reckoned with. He would be impressed if it wasn’t turned towards himself.

“That’s what reassures me the most,” she continued.

She opened the door of the kitchen, walking back towards the living room. Pontmercy stopped talking immediately – he seemed to be trying to explain to Azelma about Valjean’s past – while Valjean raised his head from where it had dropped into his hand.

Javert placed the tray on the table. Walking over to Valjean, he murmured, “You raised a hell of a daughter.”

Valjean stared at him. Slowly, his gaze travelled to that very woman. 

“Cosette,” he said, sounding uncertain. “What did you _say_ to Javert?”

“Nothing. Please don’t worry about it, Papa.” She picked one of the cups and handed it to him with a sweet smile.

“Tea? I made it just as you liked it.”

Slowly, eyes still fixed on her face, Valjean took it. He looked rather shocked.

Javert couldn’t help it: he started to laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is my thematically most well-rounded chapter so far. There’s proper Valjean/Javert, worldbuilding, plot, religion, philosophical discussions on the nature of justice, and character development for pretty much every major character… all at the same time. 
> 
> Please, please tell me if you like this iteration of Cosette. I think I’m way too fond of her (and Azelma), so I’m not sure of my characterisation anymore. Also, who _do_ you think Frey is?


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The future unfolds before the slave Javert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Book III Chapter Six: Rightful Authority**
> 
> **Warnings:** This is 99% plot and worldbuilding with _another_ OC to facilitate. I’m sorry.

“Azelma said he is a good man from what she had seen and heard from him,” Valjean said contemplatively. “Do you think that’s true?”

It was Monday and they were heading towards Frey’s school after their visit to the shelter. They would be earlier than usual: entirely deliberate, because they had chosen this time to speak to Frey about their plans.

Javert looked at him. He huffed, stopping in his tracks and leaning on his cane; he wasn’t recovered enough to speak properly while walking. Three steps in front of him, Valjean stopped as well, turning back and letting the chain slacken in his hand.

“You already think he’s a good man,” Javert grumbled. “So what does it matter what I think?”

“It always matters what you think,” Valjean told him. “Especially since _you_ are the one who will be under his charge.”

Sighing, Javert rubbed a hand over his beard. “Look, none of this matters if he refuses,” he said. “So why don’t we ask him first?”

Slowly, Valjean nodded. He started walking again, keeping a slow pace so as to accommodate Javert’s still-healing leg, which annoyed Javert to no measure. The surgeon had apparently placed some sort of prosthetic for the shattered bone when they first operated on him – something that would disintegrate as the bone grew – and while that sped up the healing, it still wasn’t fast enough for his tastes.

They arrived at the school without speaking another word to each other. But the silence was comfortable enough, broken periodically by the metal taps of Javert’s brace and cane. 

Frey was inside, walking down one of the hallways. His eyes widened when he saw them, but before he could speak, Javert took one step forward.

“We need to talk to you,” he said brusquely.

“Yes,” Valjean nodded, his voice far gentler. “We do.”

The younger man looked from one of them to the other before he slowly nodded. “Come with me then,” he said, and led them towards his classroom. He pulled out two chairs towards the desk before he perched on the desk itself. Then, at Javert’s glare, he moved another chair until they were all eye-level to each other.

“There’s something you need to know about me,” Valjean began.

Placing a hand on his arm, Javert shook his head. “We need you to do us a favour,” he told Frey directly.

“Javert!” Valjean protested. “We can’t ask this of him without telling him the circumstances.”

“He keeps plenty of secrets from us,” Javert shrugged. “It’s fair enough for us to do the same.”

His eyes met Frey’s: a direct challenge.

Frey met his gaze for a moment before his shoulders shook. He huffed a laugh. “Monsieur,” he said, turning at Valjean. “Do you ever wonder why I never addressed you by ‘Fauchelevent’?”

Valjean blinked. “I thought it was because of my position as a teacher here.”

“There are other teachers,” Frey pointed out. “But I address none of them as ‘Monsieur’.” A wry smile. “Or ‘Madame’.”

“I…” Valjean shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”

“It’s because,” Frey took a breath. “I know it’s not your real name.”

Javert’s eyes widened. Beside him, Valjean stilled.

“See, I have a habit of keeping track of the news,” Frey said, lips curled into a wry smile. “There was one story, around eight, nine years ago. A Mayor Madeleine went to a courtroom in Arras, and confessed that he was a parole breaker in order to save the life of a man who was unfairly condemned.”

He folded his hands. “I had access to the recordings of the trial. I watched them because that news piqued my interest a great deal. It was the first time I had proof – real, solid proof – that not only were there convicts who were good men, just men, but they were capable men who could accomplish plenty as well. Later, when I went through the reports of Mayor Madeleine’s deeds in Montreuil-sur-Mer, I had even _more_ proof.”

Turning, his smile softened. “You made a great impression on me, Monsieur. I knew who you were the very moment I saw your face.”

Valjean was gaping like a fish. “Yet you… you still…” he waved a trembling arm around the school.

“Who better to teach the wretched than one of the wretched themselves?” Frey shrugged. “Who better to show them kindness and mercy than one who could empathise with them? Who knew what they had been through?” 

Leaning back on his chair, he shook his head. “I can teach them history. I can tell them that they deserve better. But I cannot make them _feel_ it, like you do.”

No, he could not. Despite his clothes, Frey’s very bearing showed that he was a well-born man. His very air itself declared it; a mark on his skin that could not be hidden away.

“So, Monsieur,” he said, eyes turning to Valjean. “Whatever favour you wish to ask of me, I will try my best to fulfil it.”

“You can, for one, tell us who the hell you are,” Javert said before Valjean could even scramble for words.

Frey looked startled for a moment before he threw his head back and laughed. “That I can’t do,” he said. “Not before…” he shook his head. “It’s not merely my secret to reveal.”

Javert opened his mouth to protest, but Valjean rested a hand on his shoulder. He subsided.

“I need you to take over Javert’s contract for me,” Valjean said. “Since you know who I am, then this makes it easier to tell: I am planning to confess my identity again, but, this time, Marius will appeal on my behalf.”

“No more Fauchelevent,” Frey murmured quietly. “The life of an honest man.”

Valjean started, and Javert would have as well if he hadn’t stifled the urge. That was almost _precisely_ the words that had convinced Valjean; the words that the Bishop of Digne had said. How had Frey known?

The man himself was staring at his hands. After a long moment, he rubbed them over his face hard. “I… I wish I can say yes.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “But I need two days.”

He raised a hand before Javert could protest. “You’re putting a great deal of trust in me,” he said. His eyes, for the first time, looked conflicted. “You are… My _God_. I’m…” he rubbed his face again. “I’m honoured. I truly am. But I need those two days.”

“What for?” Javert asked, because Valjean seemed on the verge of agreeing.

“If I am to have your contract, I need better credentials,” Frey muttered. “That’s part of it. The other part is…” He shook his head hard. “The trust that you’ve given me... It’s not just that I keep my secrets still. But they’re not, as I said, only mine to reveal.”

“You have it,” Valjean said quietly. “In two days, we’ll come here for your answer.”

“No,” Frey shook his head. “I’ll come to your house, Monsieur. Ten in the morning, I’ll be at your house. I…” For a moment, he looked immensely frustrated. “Please. _Please_ , I need you to trust me on this.”

“What secrets do you have that require so much mystery?” Javert burst out, unable to contain himself any longer.

Frey looked at him. His lips twitched. He started to laugh, too loud and with a hysterical edge. “It’s…” He shook his head. “Javert, you have _no idea_.”

Well, he would have an idea if the man stopped circling around the damned subject and just said what he so obviously wished to.

Valjean stood up from his seat, reaching forward to place a hand on Frey’s shoulders. “All men have their shadows,” he said quietly. “If you do not wish to tell, then…”

“No,” Frey said before Javert could. He shook his head so hard that his red cap went askew. “No. I must. You’ve given me so much trust and I have done _nothing_ to earn it. Not to mention…” He ran his hand once more over his face.

“I will tell you. I cannot live with myself if I don’t.”

Slowly, Valjean nodded. He looked utterly confused, and Javert knew his own face showed the same. “Ten am at Rue Plumet, number fifty-five, in two days,” he said. “We’ll wait for you there.”

Taking a deep breath, Frey nodded. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely.

“Now,” Valjean said, looking at the two of them. “Shall we get back to work?”

Javert felt a little dazed. He still had no idea how Valjean could trust Frey so; how he could put so much faith in a man who he knew nothing about and whose very existence seemed to be a question. 

But he nodded, nonetheless. They would have their answers in two days; Javert had patience, and it would have to serve him for now.

***

The moment the clock struck ten, the bell rang out in the house: there was someone at the gate. 

Javert exchanged a glance with Valjean before they stood up. They were alone in the house at the moment: Azelma was at work, the boys in school, and Cosette and Pontmercy at the Gillenormand estate.

“He’s punctual, at least,” Javert said dryly.

Valjean laughed. He picked up Javert’s chain from the shoe rack, hooking it onto the collar before he opened the door.

Frey was standing outside the gate, his hands shoved into his pockets. He was dressed as he usually did in the school – ragged jeans, leather jacket, and grey shirt. The red cap and scarf were both gone.

He gave them both a nod as they stepped outside the gate. 

“We’re going to Rue de Babylone. There’s someone there who is waiting to meet you. I think…” his shoulders shook a little. “You’ll understand everything once you meet him.”

More secrets. More mysteries. Javert scowled, but he had to fall in step as Frey started walking. Valjean passed him as he took his place three steps ahead, and Javert caught sight of a very odd look on his face.

“There’s something that has been bothering me,” Javert said, keeping his voice just loud enough to be heard by the two men ahead. “You said that you saw the news nine years ago. But you couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen then.”

“Yes,” Frey nodded.

“How did you get access to the court records at that age?”

Frey tossed a wry, tired smile over his shoulder. “You’ll see. Ten more minutes, Javert. I promise.”

Javert had to content himself with that. His hand gripped tighter around the cane, nonetheless.

When they reached Rue de Babylone, Frey walked down the street. This part of Paris was still bourgeoisie, but the wealth of its inhabitants was markedly lesser than those on Rue Plumet. Frey led them past a series of small terrace houses, clearly built after the civil wars, before he stopped in front of an apartment building.

He drew out a card from his pockets and led them in, still entirely silent. They went up two flights of stairs – Valjean supporting Javert with a hand on his arm – before Frey stopped in front of a nondescript door.

“Moment of truth,” he said, and laughed to himself. He tapped the card on the door once more, and pushed it open.

The first thing Javert noticed was that the room was almost entirely bare: the only exceptions were bookshelves nearly spilling over with books. A red one caught his eye: paperback, with black words scrawled on the spine: _The Communist Manifesto_. He didn’t recognise it, so he continued scanning the room.

There was a couch set in front of a shelf that held a small holographic projector.

“Philippe!” Frey called.

A door slammed open. A man dressed in the National Guard’s uniform ran out. He whipped off his hat immediately at seeing Frey, tossing the thing onto the couch. He had black curls that nearly fell over his face, and he looked to be around Pontmercy’s age.

Javert felt his breathing stop the moment he saw the face. Beside him, Valjean had frozen so entirely that Javert couldn’t even hear him breathe.

“Mathieu!” the man grinned, throwing his arms around Frey. “You brought them! You really did!”

Frey rolled his eyes. He placed a hand straight onto the man’s face, pushing him away. Javert stifled an incoming apoplexy. 

“Calm down,” Frey scolded. A hand grabbed the man’s collar, dragging him until _that_ _face_ was turned towards them. Those familiar eyes were wide, guileless, and blue. “Let me introduce you properly.”

Before the man could say a word, Frey made a theatrical bow.

“May I introduce Charles-Louis-Philippe, le Petit-Aigle de la Maison de Napoléon.”

The Little Eagle of the House of Napoleon. The son of Our Second Napoleon. His heir, his _successor_ ; the man who would eventually become Our Third Napoleon, if the regime continued. The man whose face had been on the news channels more times than could be counted. Javert felt a little dizzy.

The Petit-Aigle – Javert could not even think of him as anything else- laughed. He mirrored Frey’s motion in reverse.

“And this is Charles-Baptiste-Mathieu, de la Maison de Napoléon.”

“I think,” Valjean said, his voice coming from very far away. “I need to sit down.”

A hand closed onto Javert’s arm. He found himself dragged towards the couch, and went willingly. When his knee hit it, he dropped down immediately. 

Javert wanted to laugh. His instincts had been perfectly accurate. Southwards, towards Fountainebleau: the very heart of power in their country; the seat of Napoleon. He dropped his head into his hands.

“I… I suspected,” he heard himself saying. “I suspected but I never thought it was _possible_ …”

“No, of course you haven’t,” Frey said. “Who would have thought that the House of Napoleon could have a bastard, and that bastard would end up on the streets?”

Jerking his head up, Javert stared. Beside him, Valjean was staring ahead blankly, slack-jawed.

The Petit-Aigle rolled his eyes, smacking Frey on the back of his head. “I told you to not refer to yourself as that.”

“But it is the truth,” Frey shrugged. He quirked his lips up slightly. “My parents were not married. My very existence offends my uncle.”

“Your uncle,” Valjean sounded dazed, as if he wasn’t sure if he was asking a question or making a statement.

“Louis-Jérôme, the Second Napoleon,” Frey said, his lips quirking up in that now-familiar wry smile.

“You’re not a bastard,” the Petit-Aigle insisted. “Your parents were legally married when you were born.”

Frey rolled his eyes. “And the marriage was rendered illegitimate, remember? So yes, I _am_ a bastard.”

The Petit-Aigle opened his mouth. Then he caught sight of Javert and Valjean, the two of them still staring bug-eyed at him. He gave a sheepish laugh, his hand reaching to rub the back of his neck, and the motion was so incredibly Pontmercy-like that Javert had to blink.

“We’re being horribly rude to our guests,” he told Frey. Turning, he executed a bow towards them, and Javert could practically hear something else in Valjean’s brain break.

“Messieurs, please let me explain,” the Petit-Aigle said. “Mathieu here is my cousin; we share a grandfather.” By which, Javert thought hysterically, he meant Our Great Napoleon. “My aunt, his mother, was Therese, the oldest and favourite child of our grandfather. She served as a field nurse during the unification. It was in that capacity that she met my uncle, Mathieu’s father. He was nothing more than a Sergeant, but they fell in love, and they married with my grandfather’s blessings.”

“Philippe, no one wants to hear about-”

“Mathieu, weren’t you always the one who lectured to me about the importance of history?” The Petit-Aigle raised his eyebrow. “Or the need to understand the reasons behind a man’s actions?”

Frey sighed, slapping his hand over his face. 

Satisfied, the Petit-Aigle went on. Javert couldn’t even begin to think of speaking, much less interrupting. “From that marriage of love, Mathieu was born. He was my playmate and my protector since my birth. We were brothers in everything. Grandfather often joked that he would look upon both of us as potential heirs.”

He paused, taking a breath. 

“Fifteen years ago, when Mathieu was ten and I was seven, Grandfather died.” He rubbed a hand over his neck. “It was sudden. He was still healthy. Then my father came to the throne, and…” he rubbed his mouth. “His first deed was to make illegitimate my aunt and uncle’s marriage. With that, he sent them to their graves, and turned my brother into my servant.”

“But,” Javert said, unable to help himself. “The Duchess Therese only died four years ago.”

“It took Mother eleven years to die of a broken heart,” Frey said. He was staring out of the window, eyes faraway. “After she died, I left Fountainebleau. There was little left for me there already, and with her gone…” He shrugged.

Four years ago, Frey appeared and set up the school. Four years ago, the Duchess Therese died. Now everything made sense. Almost too much sense.

“Pardon me,” Valjean cleared his throat. “This is… this is fascinating, and surely means a great deal to you, but I…” He glanced at Javert, who shook his head. “We don’t know why we’re here.”

Frey’s eyes snapped back to them. He raised a hand, and the Petit-Aigle fell silent, mouth snapping back shut.

“Do you know why Grandfather chose ‘Napoleon’ as his title?”

Javert blinked. 

“It was to emulate the great conqueror of yore,” Valjean said tentatively. “The man who made France into an Empire.”

“No,” Frey shook his head. “That is Louis-Jérôme’s idea. Grandfather never once said that. The reason why he chose it was, in fact, not for _that_ Napoleon.”

His smile turned sharp. “Napoleon, for Napoleon III, the man who preceded the Third Republic. A Republic that lasted for _eighty years_ , longer than any of its predecessors, and a Republic that led to what used to be known as ‘modern France’, before the civil wars.”

Javert blinked. He had the distinct impression that most of those words just flew over his head.

“Napoleon III was the President of France during Second Republic,” Frey continued, clearly swept up in his telling of history. “But when he was denied a second term, he enacted a coup d’état and made himself Emperor. Then, years later, his rule was so cruel that he was overthrown, and that made way for the Third Republic.” 

Frey finally seemed to have noticed their faces. Or, rather, _Javert’s_ face, because there was a dawning comprehension in Valjean’s.

“My Grandfather made himself into a tyrant so he would be overthrown by the people,” he spread out his hands. “He unified France, enforced strict laws such that civil war would not break out again, and made sure that everything was functional. But not well.”

The _school_. Frey’s political statement: a dilapidated building that could function, but looked as if it was on the verge of collapse. It was a bloody metaphor for the country.

“You…” Javert pointed, frustrated to the point of uncaring about Frey’s blood or the Petit-Aigle sitting beside him. “You are _exactly_ the kind of overeducated idiot that I dislike. Even Pontmercy is better than you.

“He’s doing something. Even before he started practicing law properly…” Wait, he could not give away that Pontmercy was at the barricades. “He did _something_. What are the two of you _doing_?”

Valjean was staring at him, a small smile tugging on the edge of his mouth. Javert scowled at him: he did _not_ like Pontmercy, no matter what was coming out of his mouth.

“You are both men of power. Great power. Power beyond what either of us can even imagine.” His scowl deepened. “The speech five days ago: that was your work, wasn’t it? You spoke to the leader, to your _uncle_ and,” his finger shifted to the Petit-Aigle, “your _father_. You told him about the trial and he gave a speech when he hadn’t in four years. One moment, and you enacted more change than either of us could do in a lifetime. So why haven’t you done it _before_?”

“That’s-” the Petit-Aigle said. His lips were pressed into a line.

“Philippe,” Frey placed a hand on his shoulder. “He’s right. Isn’t that why we asked them here?”

The Petit-Aigle subsided. He sighed.

His eyes turned towards Javert, and he rubbed a hand over his face. “You’re right,” he said again. “We should be doing so much more. But you’re overestimating our influence, Javert. Philippe here is not the leader. He cannot make changes to the policies. He could bring things to his father’s attention, but how he reacts is…” He shook his head.

“Besides, he can’t speak too radically against his father,” he continued. “If he did, we lose our last, and most desperate, option.”

“Which is?” Valjean asked.

“I’ll abdicate,” the Petit-Aigle said quietly. “After my father dies, the moment I take the Eagle during the ceremony, I will abdicate. But…” He sighed, looking world-weary. “But that would be forcing a Republic upon the people. How is that any different than forcing a monarchy, or a dictatorship?”

Javert opened his mouth. He closed it, and made a helpless motion. “I’m not even sure how to address you,” he said weakly.

“Philippe,” came the immediate reply. “Please call me Philippe. M. Philippe, if you have to. But not… not any of my titles, please. Especially not ‘Petit-Aigle’. I hate that.”

Slowly, Javert nodded. “M. Philippe,” he said, and tried to not wince. “I don’t understand: why is a Republic necessary? If you are a good man, and you hold the position of leader, would that not be a good thing?”

Frey turned towards Valjean. “Monsieur,” he said. “I think you can answer that.”

Blinking, Javert turned. Valjean still resembled a man who had an axe taken to his head, but he shook himself at the address and smiled.

“Our system of governance is predicated on the fact that all people had their places and roles according to their births,” Valjean started haltingly. “This means that even if- M. Philippe here became leader and ruled fairly, that assumption still remained. Whereas a Republic is based on the idea that every person is _equal_.”

“No worse than any man,” Javert murmured under his breath. “No better than any man.”

“Yes,” M. Philippe nodded. “The deeds of my forebears and my birth should not define me. It should not give me privileges beyond what should be given to every person.” His lips curved up into a small, mischievous grin. “If every man is a King, then no one is King. Even the King will only be a man.”

The words of the boys at the barricades. Javert blinked. He looked at Frey, who rolled his eyes and jabbed a finger into M. Philippe’s side.

“This idiot used to go to the Café Musain sometimes,” he said, sounding long-suffering. “No matter how many times I told him that it was dangerous and he would be recognised, he still went.”

“You told me that I needed to see what things were like before I could even begin thinking of changing them!” M. Philippe protested, looking wounded.

“What am I, chopped liver? Weren’t my letters enough?”

“Reading isn’t the same as seeing,” M. Philippe huffed. He turned away from Frey, facing the two old men in the room again. “Anyway, that is only our last option. We would really rather for the people to rise themselves.”

“The barricades showed that they were afraid,” Frey added. “They’re not angry enough. That’s why… that’s why we need the two of you.”

Javert cocked his head, confused. Valjean looked much the same as he blinked, owl-eyed.

“It sounds cruel, but we hoped your trials would serve as catalysts,” Frey continued, leaning forward. “First, Javert’s trial will show that the law hass been misused. Then, Monsieur’s will show that the law is wrong.”

“Did you give Pontmercy the idea?” Javert narrowed his eyes. From what he had seen of this man, he wouldn’t put it past him.

Frey laughed. “You give me too much credit,” he grinned. “I simply saw an opportunity and made the full use of it. In fact…” he looked at the two of them, eyes turning serious again.

“This might be the opportunity that we have been waiting for.”

“We might not win,” Valjean said cautiously.

“Well, we’re hoping that you will,” M. Philippe said. He rested his head on his hand. “But if you don’t…” he offered a shy smile. “I have enough authority to offer a pardon.”

Javert froze.

“We would really rather not have it come to that, because then it would undo everything we’ve tried to do,” M. Philippe continued, looking down at his hands. “Because then Monsieur here will be pardoned on a whim of the House of Napoleon instead of the law having been proven to be wrong. But it would be even more unfair for a good man to be locked up, so… if I have to wield that power, then I will.”

In that one moment, Javert wanted to reach out and grab him by the collar and shake him. He wanted M. Philippe to give Valjean a pardon _right now_ , and damn the rest of the country. They could fend for themselves; what right did Frey, or even M. Philippe, have to make use of Valjean like this? To turn him into a symbol and parade him for eyes to see?

His mind flashed, involuntarily, back to Khulai. Dressed in little other than chains, abandoned, and for what? _I tried to live_ , he had said.

Closing his eyes, Javert sighed. No, this had grown bigger, far bigger, than the two of them. As it should have; as it was right to have. Because justice had no meaning if it was not fair; because if one man received justice while others were denied it, then it would not be justice at all. The eyes of the Lady should not be blindfolded, but the now-opened eyes should still look upon all the same way.

“I…” Valjean’s voice sounded terribly shaky. Javert’s gaze snapped towards him, and he reached out to squeeze a shoulder lightly.

“You deserve freedom,” he said, voice low but very firm. This was his belief, and he would not be dissuaded from it.

Valjean swallowed hard. His head lowered, eyes shadowed. Squeezing his shoulder again, Javert changed the subject.

“You said that you have been waiting for this opportunity for years. What do you mean?”

M. Philippe and Frey exchanged a glance before the latter quirked another wry smile. “Go ahead,” he nodded towards his cousin.

Folding his hands once more on his lap, M. Philippe gave Javert an uncertain smile. “We’ve been trying to find a way to change things for the past fifteen years. Even before Mathieu started serving as my eyes and ears on the streets four years ago, we have both been going out, looking for incidents that we can bring to my father’s attention. To get him to understand, to see the country and its people as we do.”

He took a deep breath, and let it out with a sigh. “My father believes all who do not have a title or wealth of some sort to be beasts. They _need_ the strict laws. He believes, too, that there is no one better than him, the son of the man who unified the country, to enforce those laws. To ‘leash the beasts’.” His hands did not move, but the quote marks were audible nonetheless. 

“I tried to get him to understand the need for education, to no avail. But ten years ago…” He glanced at Frey.

“There was the case in Arras,” Frey picked up the thread. His eyes turned from M. Philippe to Valjean. “I told you, Monsieur, that you were the first person who gave me concrete _proof_ that someone who was not born of a privileged family – someone who was a convict, and spent time in prison - could make something for himself. You were not a beast at all, but a good man, a just man, who confessed and gave up a comfortable life to save the life of a complete stranger.”

Frey’s eyes hooded. “But the courts refused to see.”

Even the town itself failed to see. Javert’s lips twisted; he saw with his own eyes how the people there had turned upon Valjean once his true identity was revealed.

“When the appeal goes through, when it is publicly won, it will be very difficult for the people to refuse to see who you are,” M. Philippe finished.

Valjean inhaled sharp and deep. His shoulders were tense, and his hands clenched on his lap. “You would’ve turned me into a symbol without telling me,” he said, voice carefully even.

“Yes,” Frey nodded. “I would have. I will still do so even if you despise me for it. If I must become despicable for justice to be made real, then so be it.”

“No,” Valjean protested immediately, as Javert knew he would. “No. Surely there are good deeds accomplished through despicable means, but you should never go as far as being a despicable _man_.”

Javert swallowed back a laugh. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:20.” He slanted his eyes towards Valjean. “I should have known.”

Frey closed his eyes, huffing out a breath. “A symbol who is, in truth, a man. A good man.” His smile widened, turning genuine at the edges. “The best that I have ever known.”

Valjean closed his eyes. His head dropped, chin touching his chest. He did not speak. Javert’s hand tightened to his shoulder.

His eyes returned to Frey. “So will you take my contract?” he asked bluntly. “That’s what you brought us here for, isn’t it?”

Shoulders shaking, Frey let out a laugh. “No,” he breathed out. “That’s not what I brought you here for.”

He lifted his gaze, meeting Javert’s directly. “I brought you both here because you have given me so much trust, and yet all I seem to do is to make use of you. That is…” he shook his head. “It is unfair.”

“I’ve never seen him so flustered,” M. Philippe added, chuckling. “It was the first time he sought me out instead of the other way around ever since he left.”

Javert looked from one man to the other before he said, “You still haven’t answered our question.” Though it was clear enough, he wanted Frey to say it; to stake his honour, however much he had, upon this.

Exchanging a glance with his cousin, Frey laughed. It was low, and with a trace of bitterness. “I do not want a slave,” he said. “It will go against every single principle I hold dear.”

He paused. His eyes fixed upon Javert. “But if Monsieur can put aside his own comforts for the good of another, then I can as well.”

As if Javert would allow him to get away with such vague promises. He waited, silently cocking his head to the side. 

The wryness returned to Frey’s smile. A weight dropped upon his shoulders, slumping them. “Yes,” he said after a moment passed. He met Javert’s gaze. “Yes. I’ll hold onto your contract. Until Monsieur is free.”

Javert nodded. That was an acceptable answer. “Tomorrow then,” he said, glancing over to Valjean. “Tomorrow, and the day after, we’ll go to the Palais again.”

If the wheels had been turning in motion for the past fifteen years, then there was no reason to slow them now. Besides… his gaze rested upon Valjean’s still-bowed head.

_If the world believes in your goodness,_ he thought, _so perhaps you will too_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say that, thematically and plot-wise, Valjean is the protagonist, right? Everything is driven by him. Let me explain.
> 
> This entire plot is almost entirely inspired by my own personal musings regarding Valjean’s confession at the Arras/Champmathieu trial. In essence, I believe that despite Valjean’s own framing of the act as one being that of conscience, it is undeniably political. _Les Misérables_ is a political novel, and the framing of the trial makes its point very clear: the system is terrible, and it wreaks horrors upon the people. 
> 
> That’s all I’m going to say about that. I originally had a massively long note about my thoughts regarding the framing of that trial, but then it all went into a character’s mouth in one of the later chapters. I don’t write meta; I write my meta _into_ fic.
> 
> Anyway: later on, when Valjean does his infamous “I am a convict, don’t tell Cosette, and I’m leaving now” to Marius, what it shows isn’t just his self-sacrificing nature. It also shows that the system is so terrible, so horrific, that it reduces a man to the label of “convict” in _his own eyes_. This is shame from the outside, from the oppressive system, fully internalised. And that is… well, I cannot express the extent of my rage at that. Please imagine a person flipping several tables and screaming.
> 
> Hence this entire fic. Even though Valjean would be happy with a pardon, _I_ wouldn’t be until the entire system is overturned and Valjean _himself believes_ he is a good man. That’s _my_ idea of a happy ending, and – let’s face it – this fic is incredibly self-indulgent. I’m not even going to try to deny that; I know I can’t.
> 
> This is also, by the way, why I have set up this entire new futuristic Dystopia AU. I want the system fixed to write Valjean the happy ending he deserves. However, I cannot fix nineteenth century France or the modern world without a) being terribly disrespectful, and b) utterly destroying the suspension of disbelief. So I made up a world with the same problems, but with solutions I built in myself in order to fix it. (Hence, the OCs and the endless rambling about the history of this ‘verse.)
> 
> In other words: this fic is over 100k of the author giving her favourite characters the endings she thinks they deserve. Thank you for being along with the ride, and for reading this incredibly long rambling.
> 
> I’ll go back to having much shorter notes next chapter, I promise.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert finds peace with a man who is not his master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **Book III Chapter Seven: Confessions Found**
> 
> **Warnings:** Discussion of slavery; explicit discussion of homosexuality from a Roman Catholic viewpoint; middle-aged virgins (kind of); explicit sexual content; more than a hint of rather non-conventional D/s.

The man who handled Javert’s newest transfer was not the same as last time, but he raised an eyebrow when Valjean made his request anyway.

“Most slaves who are lucky enough to be bought tend to stay with the same Master until their sentence is served,” he remarked casually. His eyes flickered towards Valjean for a moment. “But then, I suppose that a slave that causes such uproar isn’t one worth keeping.”

When Valjean didn’t reply – his fists, Javert noted, were tightening in his pockets – the man’s eyes turned towards Frey. “Are you sure you want someone like him?”

Frey smiled. He was dressed like a wealthy student today, red scarf and cap both missing. “Wild horses are the most fun to break in,” he shrugged.

The man laughed. “You’re going to have your hands full with this one, Monsieur,” he said. “Do you want a collar with a proximity alarm installed?”

“No,” Frey shook his head. Javert’s lips quirked upwards very slightly – he noticed, too, Valjean’s burning gaze on the man the moment the question was voiced. “Keep the collar the same. Just changing ownership will do.”

“Even the voice commands?”

“Yes. Even those.”

“Why?”

“Breaking in wild horses is always the most fun without using the harsh tools of the trade,” Frey’s smile widened, turning dark at the edges. “There’s a technique called ‘hand-taming’. I’m going to try it.”

“Well, that’s your funeral,” the man said. “Or his, at any rate.”

He motioned with his hand. Javert tipped his head back so his jaw wasn’t blocking the signal receiver on his collar. There was a whisper-soft _beep_. 

“Just two more steps, Monsieur. First: will you state your name so the collar can recognise your voice?”

“Mathieu Frey.”

A memory returned to Javert: Valjean standing here, almost at the same spot. He had said ‘Ultimé Fauchelevent” then. Soon, Javert knew; soon they would initiate yet another transfer, and Valjean would be able to use his real name then.

“Now, M. Fauchelevent,” the man said. “Even though M. Frey will allow you to remove the slave’s chain, will you now remove the chain so that he can put it on?”

Valjean nodded without speaking. His fingers were careful to not brush against Javert’s neck as he took off the chain, but Javert felt a shiver threatening to escape anyway. He bit hard on the inside of his cheek, lidding his eyes and watching through them as Valjean passed the chain onto Frey.

It was almost ceremonious. Javert kept his thoughts on that, held on to it so he did not wonder why his body did not react when Frey hooked the chain on, even though those smooth knuckles did brush his skin.

“Transfer complete,” the man announced. “You’re all free to leave now.”

Frey nodded. He nodded to Valjean, muttering a “Thank you”, before he tugged on Javert’s chain and led him out of the auction house.

Immediately after they left, Valjean grabbed hold of Frey’s sleeve, bringing him towards one of the alleyways hidden around the corners.

“How could you…” he said, the words seeming to burst out of him now that the three of them were alone. “You _lied_.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Frey shook his head. His hand dropped from Javert’s chain as if the metal was burning hot. “I was merely stating some facts and letting that man come to his own conclusions.”

“Still…” Valjean closed his eyes. “How could you say those _things_ about Javert?”

Javert snorted. He picked up the chain himself, draping it around his neck with a practiced motion before he leaned against his cane, looking from one man to another.

“Because it’s too early to let anyone know our plans,” he said, keeping his voice low. “And we don’t know what sort of rumours that man might spread.”

“That man… he never once looked at you, much less addressed you. He spoke about you like you weren’t there, or like you were an object. And Frey, you spoke the same way.” Valjean rubbed a hand over his scalp. “That’s… that’s not right.” 

“It isn’t,” Frey agreed. “But it is not a wrong that we can correct at this moment. There’s much work to be done before we can point out the wrongness in it.” His lips twisted. “I dislike the thought myself, but we _must_ pick our battles.”

Javert shrugged. He was still wondering what all of this fuss was about: he _was_ a slave, and to be spoken of like one was only expected. But he knew that voicing that thought would only worsen Valjean’s protests, so he turned to Frey instead.

“What are your orders for me, Master?”

Frey grimaced immediately. “Don’t call me that,” he said. After a moment, he sighed. “Just ‘Frey’ will do, please.”

“Is that an order?” Javert asked.

“Will you call it an order if I ask for you to allow me to treat you as a human being?” Frey raised an eyebrow. When Javert didn’t reply except to mirror the motion, he laughed.

“Fine, let that be my first order. My second is this: You are free to do what you will with your time until tomorrow night. Then come back to my place.”

He looked from Javert to Valjean, smile softening slightly. “Don’t forget that I don’t want to own a slave. I’d rather put it off until it is absolutely necessary.”

“Tomorrow night,” Valjean breathed out. He closed his eyes. “So soon.”

“We have to get it over quickly,” Frey shrugged. “There will be more wait time while the appeal goes through, and more time while the trial takes place.”

“What if the appeal doesn’t go through?” Valjean asked, seemingly helpless to stop himself. “What if the Cour de Cassation denies Marius even a chance to speak? What will happen to me then?”

“It will go through,” Frey said. His smile widened, turning wry. It was the same smile as he gave whenever he knew something that neither of the other two men did. “You have more friends than you know, Monsieur.”

Before Javert could even think of a reply, he was already stepping back. “Tomorrow night at my place,” he told Javert. “The apartment at Rue de Babylone.”

Javert noted wryly that - despite all that he had said, despite all his claims that he wished to be like other men – Frey had the natural air of command common of well-born men. It was easy, almost far too much so, to simply incline his head.

“Yes, Monsieur,” he murmured. When Frey froze, he corrected himself: “Frey.”

“I’ll see you then,” he said, and walked out of the alleyway.

Valjean watched him go, brows furrowed. Javert stepped in front of him, sliding the chain from his shoulders and placing it in those callused hands. When Valjean looked at him, eyes wide and startled, he gave him a small smile.

“Let’s go home.”

Dark eyes looked past Javert’s shoulders to the alleyway before they settled once more on his face. Valjean looked as if Javert had given him a great gift, and Javert tentatively widened his smile once more before he found hands on his collar. The chain dug against an uninjured rib as Valjean pulled him down and kissed him hard. Javert leaned in immediately, large hands spreading over Valjean’s broad shoulders and holding onto him tightly.

“Yes,” Valjean said eventually, his words muffled. “Let’s go home.”

Slowly, Javert pulled backwards. He pressed another kiss on Valjean’s mouth before he lifted those hands and kissed the rough knuckles. His eyes met Valjean’s steadily, holding that gaze until Valjean gave him a tremulous smile.

They both knew that this would be the last night in the house at Rue Plumet for the both of them. Tomorrow, they would head for the Palais of Justice, and part there: Valjean to the cells to wait until the appeal went through, and Javert to Frey’s apartment, waiting for a chance where he could try to save this man like he had saved him countless times before.

“Come on now,” he said, tugging on Valjean’s hand. “Time waits for no man.”

Valjean’s eyes turned downwards. He looked at the chain, then back to Javert. After another moment of silence where thoughts incomprehensible circled in his mind, he nodded.

Later, when they were finally home – the house was empty at this time of the day – Valjean took off the chain. He laid it carefully on its usual place on the shoe rack, hands flattened against the wood as he let out a heavy exhale.

“I’m afraid,” he confessed.

This had been coming for some time, Javert knew. He placed a hand on Valjean’s shoulder, hoping to reassure.

“Of what?”

“Twice I have stood in front of the courts as Jean Valjean, and twice I have been condemned,” Valjean said quietly. His knuckles were turning white on the countertop. “Despite all I have heard… even though M. Philippe did not seem like a man who would rescind on his promises… I cannot believe that I would be able to walk out of them a free man.”

Javert’s hand splayed on that shoulder, and he nudged Valjean until he was turning. Giving comfort was alien to him still, but he drew Valjean into his arms, tipping his head back until their foreheads could touch.

“The last time I confessed my true self,” Valjean continued, his voice barely even. “There was immediately a warrant out for my arrest. I would have been sent back to the galleys if I hadn’t…” 

Gently, his hand raised, fingertips brushing Javert’s cheek. He paused at the spot where he had punched him so many years ago.

Before Valjean could avert his eyes, Javert turned. He pressed a kiss onto the palm – so warm on his skin – before he closed his fingers around a scarred wrist, leaning in and kissing Valjean on the mouth again. 

“That was years ago,” he murmured. “Things are different now.”

“The laws have not changed much,” Valjean replied. “They have not at all when it comes to parole breakers.”

“They have not,” Javert conceded. “But now I will not arrest you even if I had the authority to. Now you have saved so many, Valjean. You have so many who…” _love you,_ he almost said, “who will do anything to see you free. So many who will fight for you.” His thumb traced over Valjean’s lower lip, and he could not even begin to describe his own smile.

Valjean shuddered. His arms curled around Javert’s chest. He rested his forehead against a shoulder. Javert tightened the embrace, pressing a kiss to his temple.

“Things are different now,” he said. “You are no longer alone.”

“There are no debts between us,” Valjean said. “Please. Tell me you know that there are no debts between us.”

Javert closed his eyes. He could not lie; never could, no matter what good it would do. “There are so many, and the scales are greatly weighed in your favour,” he murmured. “But this… this has nothing to do with debt. This is justice, Valjean.”

He pulled back a little, cupping that beloved cheek. “This is my desire. I want to see you freed. I want you to have the choice to live as an honest man.”

Valjean made a sound that was strangled in his throat. He leaned against Javert’s hand, dragging his lips down his palm in a shaky kiss. “You want this,” he repeated. 

Slowly, he raised his eyes. “You no longer have to obey me,” he breathed. “You can choose.”

“I do not,” Javert nodded. “I can. I choose this.”

They moved together with one thought: Javert leaning down, Valjean arching up, and their mouths met again. This was no longer only about the trial or Valjean’s freedom. This was… Javert stilled, pulling away from Valjean and stumbling backwards.

Days ago, he had made a promise to himself. And now he came terribly close to breaking it.

Valjean’s eyes were wide on him. Javert ducked his head, unwilling to take that gaze. He bit hard on the inside of his cheek, trying to steady himself using that sharp spike of pain. But it did not clear his thoughts; it did not silence the rising voice of _guilty, guilty, guilty_ in his mind.

He swallowed.

“I want to,” he said hoarsely, pushing the words from his throat through sheer force of will. “You have no idea how much I want to. But...” He shook his head, hands falling back to his side, nails digging into his palms so he would not reach into his pockets.

“This is a sin, and I will not let my- my desires lead you down that path.”

“Javert-” Valjean began, but Javert shook his head hard, interrupting him before he could speak another word.

“All I wish for is to lead you to joy,” he said, voice quiet and broken. “But if we continue this, then the joy will only be temporary. Afterwards… afterwards, there would be punishment. And though I surely deserve that for what I desire, I will not… I _cannot_ let you doom yourself that way.”

Valjean’s gaze weighed on him for another moment before he took a step closer. Javert backed away, trying to hold onto his conviction. But Valjean placed a hand on the back of his neck. His fingers slipped beneath the collar, and Javert shivered, gasping helplessly. Valjean smiled at him, small and sad, before his fingers dipped into Javert’s pocket and drew out the rosary.

The jet beads gleamed underneath the fluorescent lights of the hallway. Javert stared at him, feeling his blood start to burn from shame. He jerked his head away, but Valjean’s hand was on his cheek, turning him back. Javert closed his eyes, but he could not escape the warmth of Valjean’s skin as he took both of his hands, wrapping them around his own; around the rosary.

“If to desire a man is a sin, then I have fallen long ago,” Valjean said quietly. “I have wanted you since Montreuil. I have wished to have you in my arms even when I knew the respect you held for Madeleine was based on a lie.”

Javert shook his head helplessly. “There is no sin in thought,” he said. “Only in deed.”

Valjean’s lips brushed against his knuckles, and Javert shuddered hard from the heat that rushed through him from this.

“Listen,” Valjean murmured. “Christ spoke of love. He spoke of mercy, and forgiveness.” He kissed Javert’s wrists. “Do you not remember the parable of the faith of the centurion?”

Slowly, Javert shook his head.

“‘And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum,” Valjean began, his voice low. “There came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.'

“‘The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. “

Warm breath ghosted over Javert’s lips.

“‘When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.’”

Javert squeezed his eyes shut. He shook his head once more, hands tightening on Valjean’s. “I do not understand.”

“Frey has books on the Bible written years ago, before the civil wars,” Valjean told him. “Once, I read a man questioning: is it not strange that a centurion would care so much about this servant, so much that he would go to a man condemned by his Caesar, when he had dismissed another in his speech later? Is the servant truly only that to the centurion?”

There was a band tightening around Javert’s chest. He tried to swallow.

“Surely Christ, in his wisdom, knew that the centurion did not mean ‘servant’ at all. Surely Christ knew of the Romans and their Greek-taken habits of having younger men as lovers.” His lips brushed the corner of Javert’s the last word. “Yet he praised the faith of the centurion. Yet he healed the servant.”

Javert opened his eyes. Valjean was looking at him, his eyes bright with tears, and a gentle, soft smile on his lips. He trembled from the force of it; trembled from the shine of Valjean’s soul sinking into him, urging the green growth where his wooden heart had been to spread even further, taking up all of the space of his lungs.

“To know that you desire me… it brings me joy.” His hand cupped Javert’s cheek, thumb stroking over the curve with such affection that Javert could not speak. 

Trembling, Javert closed his hand around that scarred wrist. He hid his face in Valjean’s hand.

“This is not a sin.”

“Valjean,” he choked out, unable to say anything else. “Valjean. Valjean. _Valjean_.”

Drawing his arm around Javert, Valjean pulled him down until their foreheads touched. “I’m here,” he whispered. “Look at me.”

It was almost too much to take to meet those dark eyes; to allow himself to bask in the brilliance of this man’s soul. But Javert obeyed.

“This is faith,” Valjean told him. “This is hope. This is love. This is all you have given to me, Javert. And you will not damn me for it.”

Distantly, Javert heard a _snap_ , like a bone breaking. Perhaps it was the last of his defences, the last of the walls he had built around himself to hide away from this man. He did not know for sure. He knew only that he had changed so much since he first laid his eyes on Valjean with a collar around his neck; knew that the dead wood within him could only grow because of these rough, gentle hands that held him together through all that happened.

He leaned forward, driven by a want he still could not put into words. But Valjean seemed to understand, for he kissed him again. Kissed him and splayed his hands on Javert’s chest.

The rosary clattered to the ground. This time, Javert barely noticed. The warmth of Valjean’s skin was wrapping around his heart, the solidity of his touch giving the green growth within soil to sink roots down upon.

Once his world had been a stone Lady and cold words. It had been torn asunder, swept away by the roar of the Seine even though Javert had never managed to let himself fall into the waters. Now… now the foundations of his world had been rebuilt: here, right beneath his own trembling hand, held above the strongly-beating heart he could feel.

How could a man like him who had done so much wrong receive so much? Surely he deserved nothing more than cold waters above his head. Yet Javert no longer wished to seek that chill; could not even make himself want to when he could have instead such warmth. He felt like a man who had lived his life in the darkness, and had walked out and found the sun rising ahead of him, its light gentle and beautiful before becoming a blazing beacon for him to follow.

What could a man give to a sun? He did not know. Javert trembled from the inadequacy of himself, for the collar weighed heavier on him than ever. He wished to give so much, and there was only… only…

Slowly, he pulled away from Valjean. He pressed his hand harder against his chest, fingers curling in. Without breaking his gaze into those dark, brilliant eyes, he fell to his knees once more.

Valjean opened his mouth as if to speak, but Javert shook his head. He picked up the rosary from the ground, wrapping the beads around Valjean’s hands. Then, still without speaking, he brought them towards his mouth, kissing the calluses on the palm one by one, then the knuckles. His lips brushed against glass and skin, both heart-warm.

“I no longer know what it is that I can give,” he said finally. “If I can have the world and lay it down your feet, then I will. But I know you would not want the world, and there is no way I can give it to you even if you do wish it.”

He raised his eyes upwards. “This had no meaning when the law said that I belonged to you,” he continued. “But now it does not. But I still…” He bit the inside of his cheek again, and pressed on. “If you will have me, then I will give all of myself to you.”

“Javert,” Valjean choked out. One hand tightened around their joined hands before Valjean reached out with the other. Fingertips brushed Javert’s jaw gently, then skittered upwards. Valjean traced every curve and angle of his face, touching him as if he was mist.

“I would have you stand by my side,” he said finally, his eyes lidded. “That is all I wish for: to feel you beside me, for as long as we both wish; for as long as God allows. But it is a wish that cannot pass, not when…”

His hand brushed Javert’s collar. Then he shook his head, taking a deep breath.

“Until then, I will have you,” he continued. “Not for the sake of debt or gifts. Not only because you wish it. But because I… God help me, but I wish it, too.”

Javert closed his eyes. He could not breathe: his chest was too full.

“Then take me,” he said in a soft, tremulous voice. He could barely believe what he was saying. “Take me, if you so wish to.”

Valjean’s hand slid over his cheek. “I wish to,” he said. “I want to have you.”

They were not side by side; not yet. But perhaps in this, they were equals. Javert opened his eyes. He nodded.

Dark eyes searched his for a moment before Valjean took a breath. “Bedroom, then.” He raised their joined hands upwards and kissed Javert’s knuckles. “Wait for me there. I will be only a moment.”

When he stepped back, he did not let go, holding still and letting Javert lean on him to stand back up. The leg in the brace ached, but Javert ignored it, kissing Valjean on the mouth again before he nodded.

Valjean’s bedroom was dark despite it being only mid-afternoon outside. Javert hesitated at the curtains, uncertain if he wanted to draw them back. He was in the middle of a debate with himself when Valjean’s footsteps drew near.

There was a lit candle in Valjean’s hand. It threw the room into sharp relief, and Javert watched as he set it down on the nightstand. He ducked his head, trying to hide the rising flush on his cheeks when he saw the bottle of olive oil in Valjean’s other hand.

Of course he knew about the ways men could… with other men. This was what he wanted; what he asked for. Still, it was gratifying to see that Valjean was blushing slightly too.

Valjean cleared his throat. He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment before his mouth curved up into a small, shy smile. “Come here?”

Javert went. Three steps, and Valjean caught him by the back of his neck. He didn’t pull Javert in, only held him there while he looked at him, smile widening slightly. “You’re very tall,” he said sheepishly. The flush darkened. “And I… I don’t quite know how to…”

They looked at each other for a moment before Javert’s lips twitched. It was the last straw, and they leaned against each other as they laughed. Javert reached out, one hand cupping Valjean’s face as he ran his thumb over a bottom lip. 

“I don’t know quite how to either,” he said wryly. “It’s not like I’ve ever done this before.”

“Maybe we should…” Valjean hesitated, and made an opaque motion with his hands. “It would be easier if… well.”

“Not with women either,” Javert said. He forced himself to not avert his eyes. Hadn’t he already confessed this the last time?

Valjean stared at him, so apparently not. “Never?” he asked, incredulity in his voice. “Not _once_?”

Javert shook his head. There was no way he could help the red on his cheeks now, he knew; not with how they were burning.

“But you’re…” his hands flopped around like dead fishes before he raised both to rub over his scalp. “You’re _beautiful_ , Javert. Surely there have been…”

“There have been some,” Javert shrugged off the word so he would not blush even more. ‘Some’ was a little understating it, because he used to get propositions almost daily. Not that he was particularly special in that: it came with the job. Sometimes he wondered about the kind of man who would issue form-fitting leather coats to their Inspectors as uniforms.

“I’ve never wanted to,” he continued in a rush, finally giving into the urge to look away. He must look ridiculous with how flushed he was, especially now with red creeping down to his neck.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. He shrugged helplessly, his hands flailing in Valjean’s direction in some sort of explanation.

“Oh,” Valjean said, his voice full of wonder. He gave a chuckle, and rubbed a hand nervously over his scalp. “I… haven’t either. That time with you was…” He stopped, blushing even harder.

Javert blinked. Their gazes met almost involuntarily, and he found himself laughing as well, resting his forehead against Valjean’s.

“We don’t have to,” he said quietly. “If you’re not sure about this, then…”

Valjean shook his head. “I want to, but I’m not sure _how_. I thought you…” he gave another chuckle. “With the way you led the last time…”

“I’ve heard a lot,” Javert said. He tried to shrug, but it came out more like a nervous twitch. “Seen quite a bit too, really.”

Blinking, Valjean opened his mouth. Then he closed it. “That can be a conversation for another time,” he said. Javert tried to not feel pleased about the idea of ‘another time’; that Valjean was beginning to have faith in his own future freedom, even if he didn’t seem to realise it.

“Now what are we…” his hands flopped around again.

Javert laughed. He nudged at Valjean’s shoulders, urging him to the bed. “You can try sitting down and I’ll… I’ll fit myself around you somehow.”

Slowly, Valjean nodded. He took two steps backwards until his knees hit the bed. Sitting down, he scooted backwards until his feet were resting on the mattress. He blinked at them before he yanked his socks off, tossing them to the corner of the room.

Toeing his own off, Javert climbed onto the bed. He wasn’t quite sure where to place his hands, so he put them on the bedspread. Slowly, trying to find his bearings and to ignore the way he was _still_ flushed, he moved towards Valjean. Those dark eyes rested on him, the weight of the gaze growing with every movement, and Javert bit down on his own lip before he spread his legs around Valjean’s still-closed thighs. Hesitantly, he placed his hands on broad shoulders.

“Am I too heavy for you?” he asked, feeling foolish.

Valjean’s hands came around his hips. One fingertip brushed against bare skin, right where Javert’s shirt had ridden up slightly. His breath hitched, and he found himself losing balance, dropping down onto Valjean’s lap.

A soft hum sounded at around the vicinity of his chin. Valjean’s hands tightened. The thighs beneath Javert’s own flexed, and Javert found himself being _lifted_ , Valjean’s half-hard cock brushing against the curve of his ass.

There was a strangled sound. It took a moment before Javert realised that it came from _him_. He shuddered hard, trying to gain control over himself.

“Like this?” Valjean murmured. His grip tightened again, hips rocking upwards, and Javert heard himself make that sound again. “You’re not too heavy, Javert.”

“Let me,” Javert gasped out. He licked his lips, mouth suddenly dry. “Let me kiss you.”

Valjean’s laugh rumbled against his ribs. His hips rocked once more, and Javert tried to stifle the sound, embarrassed beyond belief. He found himself being tugged downwards, and Valjean was leaning up, kissing him. Javert opened his mouth, helplessly groaning as Valjean rocked against him again.

“I’ve never thought my strength could be used for this purpose,” Valjean said breathlessly. “And I think… our clothes need to be off before we can continue.”

Javert nodded mutely, his focus spent on steadying his own limbs instead of forming words. He scrambled away from Valjean, trying to breathe through his teeth as he pulled off his shirt. Beside him, he could hear Valjean’s hitched breathing as he did the same, but with far more efficiency.

The rosary went into the nightstand’s drawer, lying on top of Valjean’s bedside Bible.

Then Javert turned, meeting Valjean’s gaze a little sheepishly. “I think I need your help with this,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of his brace.

Valjean’s eyes flickered down, then back up. His brows furrowed. “Javert,” he said, hesitant. “Are you—”

“If you’re asking if I am up to this, Valjean,” Javert said, gritting his teeth. “I will leave this house _right now._ ”

He dropped down to sit on the bed, tipping his head back as his eyes narrowed into a glare.

Huffing a soft chuckle, Valjean shook his head. “God forbid,” he murmured, and dropped down to his knees.

As Javert’s hands clenched on the bedsheets, Valjean loosened the leather buckles that held the brace to Javert’s leg. One by one he pulled them out until the metal was forced to give in to gravity, collapsing in a mass of lines on and around Javert’s leg. He bit back a hiss as Valjean pulled it away, and pushed himself up with his hands to stand.

Javert lidded his eyes, avoiding Valjean’s stare, as he hooked his fingers beneath the hem of his trousers, finally pulling them – and his underwear – off. Stepping out of them, he rested his entire weight onto the healing left leg.

Bone and muscle held.

And now they were both bare to each other’s eyes. Javert fought down a nervous laugh, his previous ease threatening to disappear. He reached out blindly, fingertips brushing over Valjean’s skin. 

When Valjean stepped closer, he moved his hand, spreading it fully over the darkness of the brand on tanned skin. Valjean shuddered hard, leaning towards him, his own hands sliding over the nearly-needless bandages he had helped Javert wrap only this morning. 

Valjean looked at him. A contemplative look flashed over his face, and his hand moved upwards. A finger curled into the ring on Javert’s collar, tugging him forward, and Javert heard his throat make a whine as he was _moved_ , practically falling onto Valjean in his haste to spread his thighs.

It should be embarrassing. It should be _humiliating_. But Valjean was smiling, his fingers rubbing over the ring, clicking it against the metal band. His knuckles brushed over Javert’s neck with every other second. Almost involuntarily, Javert tipped his head backwards, trying to breathe as Valjean mouthed his throat.

“You like this,” he said, wonderingly. “You _mean_ it, Javert. You mean it when you said you want to give yourself over.”

“To you,” Javert heard himself say, the words tumbling out of him. “Only to you.”

Valjean made a sound low in his throat, almost like a growl. His teeth scraped over the sensitive skin on Javert’s throat, clinking lightly over the metal of the collar. Javert squeezed his eyes shut, throwing his arm over his face; a fruitless attempt, because he knew Valjean could feel how hard he was right against his stomach.

“Javert,” Valjean said. “Will you pass me the oil?”

It took Javert a few moments to register the words. When they finally sunk into his head, he flushed harder. But he nodded, reaching out and leaning a little away from Valjean as he snatched the bottle off from the nightstand.

He tried to look away as Valjean slicked up his fingers, but he couldn’t. His gaze seemed fixed upon how the light from the candle slid over the oil covering the callused skin; fixed upon Valjean’s movements, both confident and unsure. He bit hard down on his own lip, trying to not shiver as he took the bottle from Valjean, capping it and placing it back on the nightstand.

“You need to tell me if it is too much,” Valjean told him. “Please, Javert. Don’t hold back.”

Breathing out, Javert nodded. He took Valjean’s hand, the one not covered in oil, and rested it back onto his collar. He held it there until the finger hooked over the ring again; held it and used it as his anchor as Valjean’s fingers reached back, sliding over his cleft. His grip tightened on the scarred wrist, breath tripping in his throat, as one circled his entrance.

“Oh God,” he gasped out, back arching as it sank inside, inch by inch. It felt strange, barely a stretch, just a presence _inside_.

_An invasion_ , he thought wildly. One that was asked for; one that was welcomed. His nails sunk into Valjean’s skin as he trembled. There was nothing – absolutely nothing – that would not be inked with Valjean’s presence after this. He shuddered hard, trying to drag air into his lungs.

The finger drew backwards, just a little. “Is this alright?” Valjean asked, his voice coming from faraway and terribly close at the same time. “Does it hurt?”

Javert shook his head hard. “No,” he said. He licked his lips, feeling Valjean’s breath hitch more than hearing it, and forced his tongue to form words. “More?”

Valjean nodded against his shoulders. The finger withdrew before two pressed in, and Javert dropped his head down, pressing his mouth against Valjean’s temple at the stretch. His cock was achingly hard and he was suddenly terrified that he would come the moment Valjean took him. 

Then Valjean sank his fingers even further inside, the tips of them brushing briefly over a spot that had stars bursting behind Javert’s eyes. He cried out sharply, throwing his head backwards, shoving his hips further down on those fingers. Somehow, his erratic movement managed to jar them against that spot again, and he made a sound that was barely human, a hand clawing at Valjean’s shoulder.

“Here?” Valjean’s mouth was on his throat, right above his thundering pulse. “Like this?”

The fingers curved, calluses sliding right against the spot. Javert jerked, a marionette with strings tangled all up on just those two fingers, and he cried out again, wordless and helpless to stop himself. It felt like nothing ever had, a pleasure that crashed over him, again and again as Valjean fucked him with just his fingers.

“Stop, please stop,” he sobbed out. Valjean froze immediately, fingers half-withdrawing before Javert shook his head hard. His hair was sticking to his face, he realised, and he released Valjean’s shoulder to try to flick the strands away.

“If you keep doing that, I’m going to come,” he said, trying to steady his voice. It came out as a hoarse, raspy thing. He squeezed his eyes shut, breathing hard against Valjean’s ear. “Will you please, _please_ just take me now?”

“Surely this isn’t enough,” Valjean murmured. He rocked his hips upwards, his cock brushing against Javert’s and sending another wave of pleasure through his body. “I’m not exactly a small man.”

Javert tried to laugh. It came out as a broken thing, mangled by his panting breaths. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. In fact, if the stretch of Valjean’s cock pushing inside him burned him, then it would be a brand; another mark that stated who he belonged to. 

“It _does_ ,” Valjean insisted. His fingers pulled out of Javert’s body, his other hand tugging lightly on the collar. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He would protest; he really would. But Valjean was already pressing three fingers inside him, and any words he could have said immediately fled Javert’s mind. The stretch was slow, careful, and terribly inexorable. Javert held his breath, trying to swallow back his sounds, his hands once more clenching on Valjean’s wrist and shoulder to try to steady himself.

“Please don’t hold back,” Valjean said, his voice sounding strangled in his throat. “Please let me hear you.”

_“Valjean_ ,” he gasped out, helpless, as Valjean crooked his fingers inside him and brushed the edge of his prostate again. His hips ground down towards that hand, mindless, and his cock brushed against the hard muscles of Valjean’s abdomen and he could barely _think_.

His mouth pressed against a cheek, blindly searching until he managed to kiss Valjean on the mouth, wet and messy. He trembled hard, swallowing as the fingers slid out then back inside him.

“Take me now, damn you,” he panted out, long past politeness. “Just- just _fuck me_.”

Valjean stilled beneath him. “You’re sure about this?”

Damn this man and his consideration. Javert blinked sweat out of his eyes, meeting Valjean’s gaze as he snapped his hips downwards. “I think,” he gritted his teeth to keep his voice even, “if you put your entire hand inside me now, I would not feel any pain.”

He would continue, but there was a sudden flash in Valjean’s eyes. The pupils dilated even further, and he licked his lips, wetting them even further.

“You’re sure about that,” he said.

Javert wished he could think; wished he was cognizant enough to understand that tone of voice, or even the look in those eyes. He dismissed the thought for later, concentrating on nodding.

“Yes.”

The word seemed to blow past all of Valjean’s hesitation. He tugged Javert down by the collar, kissing him messily as his hand pulled out. “Shift up a little,” he murmured, nudging at Javert with his wrist.

Sinking his knees into the bedspread, Javert obeyed. He was sure that he was flushing all over as he watched Valjean slicked up his own cock with the remaining oil on his hand. The candlelight cast a yellow gleam over everything, the scars on Valjean’s wrist thrown into sharp relief. Javert couldn’t help himself: he grabbed hold of that wrist, bringing it into his mouth.

It was filthy, surely, but he mouthed the wrist, moving up to the palm. Oil smeared over his mouth, his chin, and he knew he looked obscene at the moment and could not care. Not when Valjean was looking at him with such heat and desire in his eyes; not when the hands on his collar and in his grasp were trembling with want. 

“Javert,” he breathed. A hoarse chuckle seemed to burst out of him. “If you keep doing that, I won’t be able to take you.”

Slowly, Javert nodded. He stopped. Valjean’s hands fell to his hips, steadying him as he lined himself up. Javert dragged in a breath, holding it in his lungs as he felt the head of Valjean’s cock against his hole, stretching the rim with the head as he sank down, inch by inch.

His head remained bowed, his chest unmoving, as he took Valjean in. His body protested at the stretch, muscles burning, but it was not painful. Far from it; it was a pleasure like none he had ever known, the pleasure of letting another within his body, within himself, a joining so entire that he could not even find the words for it.

Surely if this was a sin, then he was already burning for it. His blood had been replaced by flames in his veins, and Javert shuddered as Valjean’s hand left his collar to splay above his heart.

Finally, _finally_ , there was nowhere left to go. He sat in Valjean’s lap, dragging in panting breaths. Valjean’s hand slid over his back, tracing each knot of his spine. His fingers dragged down Javert’s chest, over the bandages, counting each rib beneath the linen.

“God,” Valjean said, sounding strangled. “Javert… Javert, you have to…”

Javert nodded. He closed his eyes, mouth against Valjean’s temple as he raised himself up and sank back down. His hands clenched on broad shoulders to steady himself, to keep himself from reaching out to touch where they were joined. He could _feel_ it clearly enough, the way he opened up for Valjean and clenched around him, his insides stretching to fit him in. The way Valjean’s balls rested below, blazing heat at the rim of Javert’s hole.

“Let me move you,” Valjean murmured, his voice shivering against Javert’s throat. “Please, let me move you.”

“Yes,” Javert said, because he could say nothing else.

Hands clenched around his hips. Javert swallowed back a cry as he felt himself lifted up; felt Valjean shove him downwards until his back hit the mattress. Valjean slipped out of him, slightly, before he fell forward, a fist hitting the sheets beside Javert’s head as he thrust in hard. Javert cried out, back arching, and Valjean’s arm wrapped around his back, keeping him like that as he fucked into him again.

This strength. This strength that could lift a cart; that could climb a high wall with a child on his back; that could carry a full-grown man for hours; that could lift Javert himself as if he was nothing. Strength that was beyond words and surely should have been beyond human power, but was real nonetheless, turned towards Javert himself and used for his pleasure.

He was beyond words, beyond words. His legs snapped around Valjean’s hips, body shifting without thought, and the next thrust brushed the head of Valjean’s cock right against his prostate. Javert cried out again, a mangled thing that was surely Valjean’s name.

Too much; it was surely too much. Every slam of Valjean’s hips drew out another cry out of him until he could hear his own voice echoing back to him. Javert had never been a man for noise, but he could no longer help himself. He raised an arm to try to stifle himself, face flushing even further.

Valjean’s fingers brushed over his neck, lightly pressing against his windpipe. He pulled Javert upwards, bending him nearly in half before he kissed him. Javert’s mouth opened, drawing Valjean’s exhale, letting that mark his lungs like Valjean’s cock was marking his insides.

“Look at me,” Valjean said. “Please, look at me.”

Javert forced his eyes open. It was hard to focus, but he found the will to, somehow. He looked into Valjean’s eyes; looked at his face. He took in the swollen and red mouth; the creases on the edges of his eyes cast into sharp shadows by the candlelight; the eyes themselves, so dark that they seemed to swallow the light; the sweat on his forehead, slipping down the sides of his face to drip onto Javert’s skin.

He should look obscene. He looked beautiful. 

“Yours,” Javert blurted out. He swallowed, meeting Valjean’s widening eyes as the thrusts slowed. “Freely and willingly yours.”

Taking Valjean’s hand, he pressed it against his cheek, half-hiding his face behind it. “I think I’ve always been yours.”

Where those words came from, he did not know. But they were the truth, nonetheless. Perhaps not from the moment they met in Toulon, or even when he first handed Valjean his parole papers. Perhaps not even in Montreuil. But truth, nonetheless.

“Javert,” Valjean said. His breathless voice, so full of wonder, twisted at something inside Javert’s chest. He trailed his fingers over his face again, from forehead down to the lips, curving around one cheek then the other. He closed his eyes, shuddering just once.

Then he leaned in and crashed their mouths together. His other hand tightened around Javert’s waist, drawing him down to his cock with his next thrust. Javert moaned into the kiss, hand clutching at Valjean’s arms, feeling the flex of his muscles as he moved. 

It seemed to last forever; it seemed to end too soon. Javert no longer knew which it was, only this: the moment Valjean wrapped a hand around his aching length and the other tugged on his collar, he came hard. White flared behind his eyes, turning the world to stars, and his seed splattered over his own stomach. 

His legs tightened around Valjean’s hips instinctively, rocking against him as Valjean’s thrusts grew harder and more erratic. He gasped into that mouth, his body wrung out and oversensitive, but still wishing to give more and more until there was nothing left of himself left unmarked.

When Valjean groaned, hips flush against Javert’s as he came inside him, Javert tore his mouth away as he cried out. His hands slid down Valjean’s back, over the too-smooth skin of his scars, and he shuddered hard as his body wanted and wanted but there was nothing more he could give.

Valjean slumped, still holding himself up on one arm as he panted. Javert tugged him down until he was resting on the bed right beside him, arm slung over his bandaged chest. He turned his head, sliding his slack mouth over the curve of one ear.

Taking one of Javert’s hands, Valjean pressed a trembling kiss against the knuckles. “Mine,” he said hoarsely. “Freely and willingly mine.”

He lifted his eyes, and his smile was a beautiful thing. “And I am yours as well. Freely and willingly so.”

Javert shifted himself down the bed, ignoring the ache and wetness between his legs and even the twinge from his ribs and lungs. He kissed Valjean on the mouth, tangling their fingers together.

“But the greatest of these is love,” he whispered, voice tremulous and equally hoarse.

“Yes,” Valjean replied. His smile was small. “The greatest of these is love.”

Perhaps he was a coward to borrow words instead of speaking his own. But Valjean’s eyes were star-bright, his touch gentle as he pulled Javert close. He was understood; surely, surely, that was enough.

Javert’s fingers tightened on Valjean’s. His leg swung over a hip, and Valjean rested a hand over his chest.

They could stay like this just a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has no plot. It’s literally over 7k of Valjean/Javert porn and porn buildup. This scene was meant to be half a chapter. Instead, it has become my _longest chapter so far._ I would be sorry except that I am not. Look, it took nearly 100k words for them to get this far, alright? 
> 
> (Bible quotes as love confessions are now my favourite thing ever for these two.)
> 
> PS: Please look at Chapters 1 and 16 again. MadMoro drew _incredibly amazing_ art. The links to the tumblr posts are right below each one. Go. Go now. (Yes, I am still buzzing with excitement because _I got art_.)


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert and the man who is no longer his Master head towards the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **Book III Chapter Eight: Undeniable Virtue**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** More OCs for plot/convenience purposes. Nothing else.

When Javert opened his eyes to see the early morning sunlight pouring in through the parted curtains, his first sight was of Valjean’s wavering, uncertain smile.

He sat up, drawing his legs up and dropping his hands on his knees. He didn’t say a word, simply watching Valjean – a distance away, leaning against the wall beside the window and looking out at the skies, dressed in nothing but his skin.

“I’m sorry for waking you,” Valjean said finally, his voice soft. “But this is possibly the last sunrise I’ll see without bars or chains. I didn’t want to miss it.”

Javert swallowed. It was too early for a conversation like this, especially after yesterday when Cosette and Pontmercy came over to say a tearful goodbye. Even Azelma had embraced Valjean, murmuring words that had startled the man. They would be leaving early enough that she would still be asleep.

None of them would be coming with Valjean except for Javert. Azelma would have to explain to her brothers that they were moving again – this time to Frey’s apartment, with his wary permission, because the police might seize the house. Cosette and Pontmercy simply could not accompany Valjean, no matter how much they wanted to – Pontmercy had to keep his reputation for objectivity in the upcoming trial, and moral support was not strong enough a reason to risk it.

There had been so many emotions flying in the air last night that Javert was nearly dizzied by them when he went with Valjean to bed. And they had spoken even more – about possibilities and hopes and a thousand other things.

But it still was not enough.

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he stood up, walking over to Valjean. He placed a gentle hand on a broad shoulder, turning the other man around. When Valjean faced him, Javert leaned in, pressing a gentle kiss to the corner of one eye.

“Only temporarily,” he murmured. “Then you will be able to step out into the light of the sun with your name yours once more.”

Valjean closed his eyes, leaning forward. His forehead touched Javert’s collarbone. “I’ve tried to make myself unafraid,” he said quietly. “But I do not know how to begin.”

“Trust in Pontmercy’s abilities,” Javert replied, cupping his hand over the back of Valjean’s neck. “Have faith in the will of those who wish to aid you.” Slowly, gently, he ran his fingers down Valjean’s back, skimming over the scars.

“Know well that you are a good man.”

Shuddering, Valjean choked out a laugh. He raised his head; there were tears beading at the edges of his eyes. “It is the last that I am having such trouble with,” he said quietly. “The last time I had a chance to live as an honest man, I wasted it. I chose instead to steal from a man who was kind to me.”

“You were a different man then,” Javert replied, swiping away the tears with a thumb. “There is no hatred I see in these eyes now. No resentment.” He slid his hand once more down Valjean’s back. “You have torn out the stitches of the beast’s skin long ago.”

Valjean shook his head. Before he could speak, Javert silenced him with another kiss.

“The wounds are still bleeding here,” he said, tapping fingers over the lash scars. He turned his wrist around until he could splay his hand over the brand, making Valjean shudder once more. “And here. Every time you have to answer to a name that is not ‘Jean Valjean’, they bleed.”

“What if those wounds are who I really am?” Valjean asked, desperation thick in his voice. “What if I do not deserve freedom, and have only been undeservedly walking these streets without collar and chain? What then, Javert?”

Javert closed his eyes. Valjean’s wounds ran so terribly deep and had been festering for so many years, and he had no idea whatsoever how to heal them. He could only try with his inadequate words and touches.

Leaning in, he kissed Valjean again. “You’re a good man,” he said. “Even if you do not believe that of yourself, believe it from my words.” He opened his eyes, meeting Valjean’s.

“No man who is not good would have willingly taken his enemy in and treated him like a man even though he deserved to be treated only as a beast.” His lips quirked up very slightly. “Only a good man would have healed his enemy, and given him faith, hope, and love aplenty.”

Valjean shook his head, eyes falling shut. “Surely that is only my own selfish desire,” he said, voice tremulous. “For I could not bear to see you in pain.”

“That very desire is what makes you a good man,” Javert insisted. He hesitated for a moment before he kissed away a tear sliding down Valjean’s cheek. “I cannot make you believe this, Valjean. Only you can. The courts could only help by clearing your name.”

He cupped Valjean’s cheek, brushing his finger over the curve of it. “I know you are afraid. But Jean Valjean has never shied away from what needs to be done for the sake of fear.”

Turning his head, Valjean brushed his lips over Javert’s palm. Sweet, soft, and warm: Javert was suddenly struck by the realisation that he would not have this again; not until Valjean’s trial was over. He would not be able to touch him or kiss him. The moment they stepped out of this room, Javert could no longer reach out and find Valjean’s warmth within reach.

 _This is but a small sacrifice_ , he reminded himself. _Do not be selfish_.

Yet his heart shrieked in denial. His very soul – the newborn thing within him that only existed after Valjean’s hand took his chain – cried out in agony. Javert closed his eyes, resting his forehead against Valjean’s, trying to bask in his warmth as much as he could.

“I will go,” Valjean said. “I will go. If not for my sake, then for all those others who deserve to be free.”

Javert nodded. His hands tightened on Valjean’s shoulders before pulling him closer. He cared nothing about those other faceless convicts and ex-convicts, he knew. He wished to fight for Lady Justice, to ensure that her sword truly turned towards those who deserved its blade. But her eyes were Valjean’s, and he knew himself well enough to understand his own selfishness.

He kissed Valjean again, hard and desperate. Valjean’s hand gripped onto his hair, pulling him down, arching against him until their bodies were pressed together, every inch of skin touching wherever they could touch.

“If only I did not have to be parted from you by this,” Valjean whispered, his voice as broken as Javert felt. His fingers slid over Javert’s face, tracing the lines and curves once more. His eyes were wet, tears spilling down his cheeks.

With shaking hands, Javert wiped them away. “We’re old fools,” he said, mirthless laughter building up in his throat. 

“We are,” Valjean nodded, shoulders shaking. “I spent so much time running away from you, and now all I wish for is to stay here in your arms.” 

Javert tried to smile. “You can. Once you are free, you will.”

Valjean cupped his face, pulling him in for another hard kiss. 

“Once I’m free,” he repeated when they parted for breath. “Once I am free.”

There was almost a trace of conviction in his voice. Javert did not even bother to stifle the victory he felt. Such a small thing, and yet it had become one of the brilliant stars of his world.

***

Silence fell once Javert’s presence in the Palais was noted for the second time. He stood there, one hand clenched tight over the cane he was leaning on while the other shoved into his pocket, and met the gazes of the officers who turned to stare.

After a moment, one of them moved. It seemed to break a spell, because the Palais main office was suddenly filled with noise: the clamouring of feet as dozens of officers suddenly rushed towards him. Javert felt Valjean tense beside him, and could barely reach out to squeeze his elbow before he was mobbed.

“Gentlemen,” Javert tried to say, but his voice was drowned out immediately.

“Knew it was unfair—”

“Bastard Tholomyés is getting an inquiry, did you hear—”

“Everyone knew you were going to recover—”

“Not everyone! Javert, did you hear about—”

“Some people on the streets were saying—”

“ _Gentlemen_ ,” Javert tried once more, a tic growing in his brow as Valjean’s nervousness grew more and more visible.

“… glad you shot him, really. Should’ve given you a medal—”

“That Pontmercy kid was good. Didn’t think I’d say that ‘bout a lawyer—”

“… They’re getting fired for what they did, of course—”

“You’re coming back right—”

“Look, even if you can’t be a proper officer, there are some cases—”

Javert took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. It had been months, nearly a year, since he had done this. But habit born from decades did not seem to go so easily.

“ _SILENCE_.”

All noise disappeared. Javert opened his eyes just in time to see several officers staring slack-jawed at him. He glared at them, eyes scanning the room as his lips pressed into a thin line. 

“This is an office,” he said crisply. “Not a marketplace.”

“ _Told_ you that nothing can break this bastard,” a voice whispered, incredibly loud in the dead silence that had settled over the Palais.

 _If only you knew_ , Javert thought. He stifled the wry smile, eyes snapping towards the young man – barely more than a boy – who spoke. “Delattre.”

“Sir!” the Sergeant immediately straightened, saluting.

Javert rolled his eyes. “Stop that. I’m not your superior officer.” He raised his cane and pointed towards the back of the room. “Is M. Chabouillet in?”

“Yes, sir!” Delattre nodded vigorously. Then he looked horrified. “I mean, not sir! I mean- uh- yes, M. Javert. The Secretary is in his office!”

There was a very familiar wheeze. Javert kept his eyes away from Valjean so he would not give in to the urge to laugh as well. “We’re here to see him.”

“Well, you heard the man!” An Inspector, First Class – Verdier – barked. He waved a hand impatiently. “Clear the damned way, you bastards!”

Valjean wheezed again. Javert resisted the urge to roll his eyes once more, walking next to him as officers shuffled around until there was a straight path to the Secretary’s office. He met Verdier’s eyes, nodding in thanks.

“I’m doing you a favour,” Verdier said, his lips twitching upwards. “Didn’t know if you heard amidst the damned din, but there are a couple of cases I want your eyes over now you’re here.”

Javert blinked. “I’m not a police officer anymore,” he pointed out.

Verdier snorted, “Unless that collar made you forget the decades you spent at this job, you’re still bloody one.”

Collar and chain, and yet there were still men who saw him the same way. Javert wondered what exactly had changed between his last visit and now; the police rarely allowed the courts to dictate their opinions on people, so it couldn’t have been the trial.

Slowly, he nodded. “Maybe later,” he conceded.

“Good,” Verdier nodded. He jerked his head towards M. Chabouillet’s office. “Go on then. I’m pretty sure he’s been waiting for you.”

“What?” The question was voiced by Valjean, but Javert wanted to know as well.

“He’s been in here more often ever since you last visited,” Verdier smirked. “Made some of the boys nervous as colts around cars and threw a wrench into some bastards’ plans. I figured that it had to do with you.”

Beside him, Valjean still looked confused, but Javert understood instantly. Perhaps it was a code between police officers, the way they spoke only certain facts with absolute faith that their conversation partner would be able to pick up the rest.

There had been corruption in the Palais, and some of it had to do with Javert himself. His lips flattened once more into a line, and Verdier laughed at the sight.

“Yeah, I figured you’d react like that,” he said. Turning towards Valjean, he nodded, “Monsieur,” and ambled back to his desk.

Javert’s mind was already working as he walked with Valjean through the main office. He barely noticed when Valjean leaned in and whispered, “What was that about? What did he mean?”

“Later,” he murmured back. He raised a hand and knocked – three times, sharply – on M. Chabouillet’s door.

“If you’re not here with something important, go find someone who gives a damn,” M. Chabouillet replied, sounding harassed.

Exchanging a glance with Valjean, Javert shrugged. He opened the door and stepped in. “It’s pretty important,” he said, leaning a little on his cane as he quirked a smile at his patron. “So are we allowed to come in?”

M. Chabouillet’s head shot up. His face looked distorted from behind the holographic projections of several files that surrounded him. “Javert!” he exclaimed. “Christ, finally. Get in here.” 

As they walked into the office – Valjean closing the door behind him – M. Chabouillet tapped agitatedly on several keys before he swiped his hand over his desk, switching off the projections.

“Bribery,” he said grimly. “That piece of manure Tholomyés bribed one of your arresting officers – Barbe – to falsify reports. Apparently this isn’t the only time he’s done it, and he’s not the only one either. Gisquet is practically lighting this entire building on fire about it, and I _know_ for a fact that he’s only doing so because of the higher-ups.”

He waved an impatient hand. “Sit down.”

Looking at each other again, Javert and Valjean sat. Javert rested his cane on the side of the chair. They watched, a little blankly, as M. Chabouillet continued to pace around the room.

“I _said_ years ago that police officers need to be paid better so they won’t be tempted to take bribes just to make ends meet,” M. Chabouillet said, dragging a hand through his hair. “Hell, I even said that they need a proper damned education before they enter a service. An academy headed by someone who knows what he’s talking about and has actually walked the ground.”

Whirling around, he jabbed a finger towards Javert’s direction. “When I read that bloody email of yours, I was going to have that to be _you_.”

Javert opened his mouth. He closed it. “You _read_ the email, Monsieur?” he asked. His voice sounded weak even in his own ears.

“Of course I did, you ninny,” M. Chabouillet huffed. “I even printed it on paper before I deleted it and made sure that Gisquet didn’t get a chance to see it.”

“Why?”

“Because the ideas are brilliant,” came the reply. M. Chabouillet looked at him and sighed. “But if it’s known to come from a convicted felon, then they’ll all go down the drain. I was going to wait until you’re acquitted before showing it to Gisquet. Then that piece of manure Tholomyés happened and…” he made a vague wave towards Javert’s collar and chain.

Before Javert could even think of anything to say – he had thought that no one had read the email, or that it had been ignored, buried underneath the mountains that M. Chabouillet surely received daily – his patron was stomping back behind his desk and dropping down onto it.

“So,” he said, folding his hands and looking at them both. “What is this important thing you’re here to talk to me about?”

Valjean was looking terribly confused. Javert glanced at him before he turned back to M. Chabouillet. “Give us a moment please, Monsieur,” he murmured.

Leaning towards Valjean, he whispered quickly, “That night, before the alleyway, I came here and wrote up an email detailing the various improvements that could be made regarding the prison system and the current police force.” He paused, then shrugged. “That’s what we’re talking about.”

Blinking, Valjean nodded slowly. He looked at Javert for a moment before his lips quirked up in an attempt to smile. “Shall we come another day when Monsieur le Secrétaire is less irritated?”

“M. le Secrétaire can hear what you’re saying,” pointed out the man himself. “And he is very curious about what it is that you’ve come to tell him.”

When Valjean turned to stare at him, M. Chabouillet smiled. “I’m not going to let you leave the room before you’ve told me, Monsieur.”

Javert reached out and squeezed Valjean’s shoulder reassuringly. Valjean glanced at him, his callused hand briefly brushing against Javert’s before taking a deep breath. Then he rested both hands on his knees and stood, bowing almost into half before M. Chabouillet.

“I have come to confess to a crime, Monsieur,” Valjean said. His voice was steady even though his hands were clenched white-knuckled on his thighs. “The last I came, I lied to you. You see, Monsieur, I am not Ultimé Fauchelevent.”

“No, you’re not,” M. Chabouillet said. He stood up from behind his desk, walking towards Valjean. Javert watched him, frozen, breath stopped in his throat.

Valjean seemed to be unable to move as well while M. Chabouillet laid a heavy hand on his shoulders.

“Look at me, Jean Valjean.”

Driven by instinct that he couldn’t name, Javert shot up from his chair. He reached out, but M. Chabouillet had hold of his wrist even before he could even… what _had_ he been planning to do?

“Sit down, Javert.”

Javert sat. The motion jarred his chair, and his cane fell to the ground with a loud clatter that was ignored by all three men in the room.

“Jean Valjean,” M. Chabouillet said, his voice contemplative. “Tree pruner from Faverolles. Convicted thirty-eight years ago at the age of eighteen for theft and breaking and entering. Sentenced to five years in Toulon prison. Sentence stretched out to nineteen years due to four escape attempts, one of which included assaulting a guard. Paroled sixteen years ago, and broke his parole immediately afterwards when he was arrested for the theft of silver from a Bishop. The Bishop did not press charges. Disappeared, and reappeared eight years later in the disguise of Madeleine, the Mayor of a town named Montreuil-sur-Mer. Confessed to being Jean Valjean in Arras during the trial of Champmathieu, and disappeared once more after being arrested.”

Valjean wasn’t breathing. He was shaking terribly hard, and Javert wanted nothing more in that moment to reach out to him. He wanted, too, to hit M. Chabouillet; to shut him up; to stop him from _listing_ out Valjean’s criminal activities as if that was all he was.

“Look at me, Jean Valjean.”

Jerkily, Valjean turned his eyes up. M. Chabouillet met his gaze for a long moment.

“I figured something was strange when Javert first came in with that letter,” he continued, still in that contemplative tone. “Here he is, my finest officer, a stickler for the law even more than I am: falsifying evidence. Not only that, but he is doing so in order to protect someone: his Master, a man named Fauchelevent. I know my officers; I know Javert. If he had a friend named Fauchelevent before, I had never heard about him. Things that I have never heard of are very curious to me.”

Javert’s hands dug hard into the arms of the chair. _Your fault_ , his mind said. It was his folly that had given Valjean away: not only in falsifying evidence, but in coming to M. Chabouillet in the first place. He should have fought alone. Even if he would have certainly died against the Patron-Minette that night, he should not have forced Valjean’s hand into calling the police.

“My position allows me access to court records,” M. Chabouillet said. He still did not move or allow Valjean to break their joined gaze. “My experiences have bred a certain instinct within me. When the two of you left my office, I pulled up the recordings of the trial in Arras. There he was, Mayor Madeleine: one of the few criminals Javert never caught. His face was younger, but still very familiar. His face, I realised, was the same as the face of the man who had just exited my office.”

Arras. It seemed to always come back to Arras. The trial had been eight years ago; it should be laid to rest then. But it had returned twice now to haunt them, and Javert did not think that M. Chabouillet would behave the same as Frey had.

“A parole breaker had exited my office. I could have him arrested right at the moment. But, Jean Valjean, you held Javert’s chain. You allow him to call you by your name – a false name, but still a proper name – instead of ‘Master’ as the law decrees you to. You behaved like a decent man. And Javert committed a crime to protect you. For his sake, I could pretend to not know a thing. If I have already hidden a piece of evidence that could condemn him, then why not let a nearly-forgotten parole breaker lie where he is as well?”

The police officer in Javert’s mind cried out in victory; he was right: M. Chabouillet _had_ hidden the letter instead of submitting it as evidence.

“Which leads us to now. Why are you confessing to me _now_ , Jean Valjean?”

Javert opened his mouth.

Before a single word could escape, however, M. Chabouillet’s eyes flicked towards him. “Be quiet, Javert,” he said. His voice was quiet, tone casual, but Javert knew him well enough to hear the danger twined within the three words.

He closed his mouth.

Valjean took a breath, then another. M. Chabouillet’s gaze had returned to him, and he seemed content to wait an age while Valjean gathered himself.

“I…” he licked his lips, not averting his eyes despite the twitches in his shoulders betraying how much he wanted to. “An appeal cannot go through unless the convict is arrested, Monsieur.”

M. Chabouillet’s eyes widened; the first sign of his composure wavering ever since he stood from behind his desk. His hand tightened on Valjean’s shoulders. “An appeal,” he said, incredulous. “You will confess now for the hope of an appeal going through. For what? For the courts to… to exonerate you?”

“Yes, Monsieur,” Valjean said. He licked his lips.

Silence draped itself uncomfortably around the room as M. Chabouillet’s eyes darted from Valjean to Javert. Javert met his gaze squarely, and nodded.

“Are you both _mad_?” he burst out.

Finally releasing Valjean – who sank back into the chair with shaking hands – he strode behind his desk. His hands slammed against the glass as he leaned towards them. 

“You wish to be re-arrested. After which, you wish to go up to the Cour de Cassation for an appeal. Even if the appeal should go through… even if the Cour allows for such a thing… what makes you think you can win?” he shook his head. “You can simply let things lie. I would have continued pretending to know nothing for Javert’s sake if you had not come into my office today. You could have continued living your life as you always have, so… _why_?”

“Monsieur,” Javert tried, careful to keep his voice low. “May I speak?”

M. Chabouillet waved a hand. “Go ahead. I want to hear your explanation for this act of lunacy.”

Javert hesitated. He looked at Valjean again – at those bowed shoulders, the lowered head – and took a breath to fortify himself. “You have done a great deal for me, Monsieur, and I am deeply grateful for it,” he began.

“You have argued once that my sentencing was unlawful; that it was not just. My appeal showed that to be true. But… please understand, Monsieur: I cannot be the sole recipient of righteous justice. I _refuse_ to be. Even in this room, I am not the only man who has been treated with injustice by the law.”

His hands linked on his lap, and he clenched his fingers hard enough to feel his bones and muscles strain.

“To stay hidden will mean that Valjean,” it was strange, so terribly strange, to use that name outside the privacy of home, “will never be able to live as an honest man. His name will always be false. I will commit fraud every single time I call him ‘Fauchelevent’. I must commit an unlawful act to prevent the injustice of a good man being sent to prison. And that, Monsieur, is unjust.”

M. Chabouillet’s eyes rested on him for a moment more before his lips quirked up very, very slightly. “I see,” he said. Without explaining, he turned to Valjean again.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Jean Valjean?”

“I…” Valjean took a deep breath. His hand rose an inch before it dropped back to his side. “To be frank, Monsieur, I am still uncertain about the appeal itself. But… but I have come here to confess because I made a promise to a man who showed me undeserved mercy that I will become an honest man. I have not fulfilled that promise.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I have not.”

After a moment, he shook his head hard. “If… if the appeal goes through, if it is won, then it will offer hope to those who have none. Javert and I are not the only ones treated unfairly by the law. I work in a shelter, and I see them every day: men and women convicted and dealt terribly harsh punishments for crimes they committed while trying to live, or trying to save the lives of their children. Even if it were not for the sake of fulfilling my promise, I will do this for them.”

“Christ,” M. Chabouillet said, wonder in his voice. His eyes moved from Valjean to Javert then back again. Slowly, his shoulders started to shake, and he dragged a hand through his hair. “ _Christ_ , the two of you.”

He lifted his head. Laughter died on his lips. “You’re proposing a revolution.”

Javert froze. He wanted to protest: _not at all_. But he knew that M. Chabouillet was right: if Frey’s plan went through, if the appeal was won and Valjean became a symbol in the eyes of the people, then… then there _would_ be a revolution.

“Yes, Monsieur,” he said, because Valjean seemed to be at a loss for words again.

Smile widening, M. Chabouillet chuckled. “From the staunchest defender of the law I know to a man who now proposes a revolution to change it,” he said, eyes fixed on Javert. “The collar has done something to you, Javert.”

 _Not the collar_ , Javert thought. _It is this man. This man with his head down, his hatred turned towards himself. This man who has given the world mercy while keeping none of it to himself._

He looked away, unable to voice his thoughts.

M. Chabouillet let out a long exhale. He tipped his head backwards, staring at the ceiling. “A man once told me something,” he said quietly. “A quote from times long ago that we have nearly forgotten: ‘My country, right or wrong: when right, kept right; when wrong, set right.’”

Laughing again, he dragged his hand through his hair. “It has been years since I thought about it. Even now, I can barely believe in it. Is this not the best possible country, the best possible world, we could have made, given the circumstances?”

Javert did not answer. Valjean was still silent.

After a moment, M. Chabouillet leaned back on his chair. “Perhaps it is not,” he said quietly. His shoulders shook slightly, and a chuckle burst out of him, mirthless and cold.

“Surely I am too old to see such changes come into the world,” he muttered to himself. “But here I am, having a hand in it.”

“You need not do such a thing, Monsieur,” Valjean spoke up suddenly. “All you have to do is to arrest me.”

“Is that all?” M. Chabouillet raised an eyebrow. He dragged a hand through his hair. “I have a conscience, Jean Valjean. A conscience disturbed by _you_ : a man living dishonestly, but still good enough to treat a man with the respect he deserves; a convict who is willing to risk his own freedom for the sake of others whose fate barely concerns him.”

Valjean gaped at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish.

“Yes, you,” M. Chabouillet said, lips quirking up. “I told you that I watched the recordings of the Arras trial, didn’t I? That man Champmathieu would have been convicted for your crimes. It would have been so easy for you to have stayed hidden and allowed him to be punished. But you came forward and confessed when no one asked you to. Even now, you’re confessing when none asked you to for the sake of others. Whose deeds are those except a good man’s?”

Shaking his head, his smile widened. “I am not a man easily swayed: it was not just for Javert’s sake that I had kept silent these past weeks.”

He stood up abruptly behind his desk before either of them could speak. “I will arrest you,” he said, looking at Valjean. “But I will treat you with respect, Jean Valjean, while you are under the police’s care. I will treat you as a good man deserves. And…” His lips curved up into a small smile. “I hope that your appeal succeeds.”

Javert stood. He bowed as low as he could go. “Thank you, Monsieur,” he said, voice choked. “For all that you have done, all that you have promised to do: _thank you_.”

M. Chabouillet’s hand rested on his shoulder. “Don’t thank me for doing what a decent man should, Javert,” he said heavily. “Not when a man of my position should have been doing so much more.”

Opening his mouth, Javert made to protest. But M. Chabouillet only squeezed his shoulder hard once before walking past him.

“I’ve long kept away my handcuffs, so I’ll need to borrow a pair,” he told them both. “Ten minutes, and I will return.”  
_  
_ The moment the door closed behind him, Javert strode towards Valjean. He fell to his knees immediately in front of him, reaching out. Valjean’s hand clenched around his wrists as their mouths crashed against each other. They kissed with desperation and need so great that they no longer cared about the officers outside, or even the chance that M. Chabouillet would return at any moment despite his words.

There was salt in Javert’s mouth. He pulled away after long moments, panting hard, before he pressed messy kisses on Valjean’s face, brushing away the tears with his lips over and over again.

“You’re a good man,” he said fiercely, voice tight. His hands clutched Valjean’s face, tugging him forward until their eyes. “Listen to me, Jean Valjean: _you’re a good man_.”

“Javert,” Valjean breathed out. His shoulders bowed, and he leaned against Javert, his grip on his wrist tightening until it was almost painful. “I can barely believe… God. _God_.”

Silencing him with a kiss, Javert murmured, “You will win this case. You will. That is what is just. That is what you deserve. That is what you should always have had.” 

Valjean sobbed. His hands left Javert’s wrists, clawing at his shoulders before he wrapped his arms around him. Javert went with the grip, letting Valjean rest his head on his chest as he shook and shook.

“No more wounds,” Javert continued, stroking his hands down Valjean’s back. “No more chains. A free and honest man.”

“You make me believe in it,” Valjean said, voice tremulous and quiet. He looked up, and his fingers were terribly gentle on Javert’s face. “It’s your eyes, Javert. You’re so sure of this that I can’t help but believe.”

Javert smiled. He pressed that hand to his own face, turning his head and pressing a kiss against the palm. “How can I not be sure?” he asked quietly. “I knew this for fact, Valjean. The moment I saw you in Arras, I knew, though I refused to acknowledge it. When you cut my bonds free at the barricades, I could not deny it anymore.”

Hesitantly, Valjean’s fingers curved over his cheek. “Do you know,” he said, voice full of wonder, “how much you have saved me?”

Breathing hitching, Javert closed his eyes. “Not as much as you have me,” he replied. Turning his head, he brushed his mouth over Valjean’s fingertips. “You have saved my very soul, Valjean.

“I would have been Hell-bound if not for you.”

Valjean leaned in, pressing a kiss to his lips. “I would argue against that, but we do not have the luxury of time,” he said. He drew Javert’s hand close, pressing it against his chest. His other hand reached out, fingers spreading out over Javert’s neck.

“Look at me, please.”

Javert opened his eyes.

“One day,” Valjean said. He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was steady: “One day, Javert, we will walk side by side as free men. No more collars, no more chains.”

“No more,” Javert echoed. His chest ached, heart full to bursting, and he kissed Valjean again.

He would kiss him and keep kissing him until time ended around them if he could, damn where they were. But his instincts kicked in just then, alerting him to the turn of the doorknob.

In that instant, he moved so quickly that he wasn’t even sure of what he was doing. Somehow, he was back to his own chair, swiping a hand over his mouth even as he ducked his head down, pretending to pick up his dropped cane. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Valjean frantically wiping his face with his sleeve.

“Well, I found handcuffs,” M. Chabouillet said. He sound incredibly amused, and Javert had a sinking suspicion that his patron knew _exactly_ what had just happened in his office. He shoved the thought out of his head so he would not dwell on it and possibly melt into the floor with embarrassment.

“Will you stand up for me, M. Valjean?”

Valjean stood, turning around to face M. Chabouillet. Javert got to his feet as well, taking his cane and leaning on it. He watched as M. Chabouillet walked behind Valjean, taking his wrists and cuffing one after the other. His own ached, and he tightened his grip on the head of the cane so he would not rush over.

This was what needed to be done, he reminded himself. This was what needed to be done.

M. Chabouillet’s eyes turned towards him. “Javert, will you be alright with your legal Master arrested?”

Javert smiled, baring just the barest hint of teeth. “Don’t underestimate me, Monsieur,” he said. “I no longer legally belong to Valjean. My contract rests in the hands of another man.”

An eyebrow rose. “Oh?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “A Mathieu Frey.”

“The crazy young man with the run-down school in Saint-Germain?” M. Chabouillet’s eyes widened. “ _That_ man?”

Ruthlessly stifling the urge to laugh at the description of Frey – it was terribly accurate – Javert nodded. “Yes, Monsieur.” He paused. “I didn’t know you have heard of him.”

“He walks around wearing a rebel’s colours days after the barricades,” M. Chabouillet snorted. “Of course I have heard of him.”

He cocked his head. “Can he be trusted to be a decent man?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

When M. Chabouillet still looked doubtful, Valjean added, “I can vouch for him, M. le Secrétaire.”

“Well,” M. Chabouillet sighed. “I will have to take your word on that.” He turned to Javert again. “So you will be returning to him, then?”

Javert nodded.

“Grab one of the scarfs from the undercover department,” his patron instructed. “We won’t have you being attacked before this revolution of yours goes through.”

“Monsieur,” Javert said. He hesitated for a moment before he pressed on. “Verdier asked me to look over a couple of his cases for him. May I?”

M. Chabouillet’s lips twitched. “Do you really think that I would refuse having my best asset back, if only temporarily? Go ahead.”

Valjean chuckled suddenly. When two pairs of eyes turned towards him, he shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, and laughed again. “It’s only that… Javert has been trying to deny that he is a policeman for months. Yet every chance he has, he jumps right back into it.”

He flashed a smile at Javert, fond and sweet. It clashed so terribly with the handcuffs on his wrists that Javert had to stifle down a shudder, his grip on his cane tightening.

“Well, I did always have a talent at self-delusion,” he said blandly.

Bending over, Valjean wheezed. Javert fought to keep his face straight.

“You’re a miracle worker as well, M. Valjean,” M. Chabouillet said dryly. “I’ve been getting him to admit that about himself for years.”

Javert opened his mouth, then closed it. He shrugged.

“Well, I haven’t all day,” his patron continued. He walked towards the door, hand resting on the knob. “M. Valjean here is going into one of the interrogation rooms instead of the cells. He’ll stay there even after I submit the report of his confession and arrest. While you,” he jabbed a finger in Javert’s direction, “have work to do.”

Technically, it wasn’t work because Javert wasn’t being paid for it. But he knew that was a quibble, so he simply nodded while he followed M. Chabouillet and Valjean out. He lingered at the doorway, watching Valjean – straight-backed, shoulders unbowed, and head held high – as he was led to the interrogations room. He shoved a hand into his pocket so he would not reach out towards him.

When he reached Verdier’s desk, he said, “If you ask me about it, I won’t help with the cases.”

“Oh, I figured that out already from the look on your face,” Verdier replied dryly. “Grab a chair. Both of them are major clusterfucks, so this is going to take some time.”

Javert nodded. After sitting down, he tried to focus on the papers in front of him.

If his eyes drifted occasionally towards the direction Valjean had disappeared in, Verdier was a discreet enough man to not mention it.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert gets to know his new Master.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **Book III Chapter Nine: Gutter Wretches**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Children saying un-childlike things; explicit discussion and description of suicide; discussion of domestic imprisonment; implications of childhood trauma. Basically: everyone in this ‘verse is traumatised and fucked up.

When the sun rose the next morning, Javert had already been awake for hours, kneeling beside his bed with Valjean’s rosary in his hand. He ignored the heat of the sun as it fell against his back, continuing to pray soundlessly, sliding the beads over his hand one by one.

He prayed for Valjean’s safety; prayed that justice would be done and that his appeal would go through. He prayed that Valjean would stay safe in the Palais.

Javert had never prayed for another, and the words came awkwardly-shaped to his lips, unable to contain all that he felt for Valjean. But he knew that God listened not to voices alone but hearts as well, and he hoped – fervently, and perhaps foolishly – that he had earned the right to be listened to, if only just this once. 

The sun had crawled high upon the skies when he finally ran out of words. He tipped his head to stare at the ceiling before his eyes fell shut, and he sighed.

It wasn’t an attack of piety that made him do this. He simply couldn’t sleep, and he knew better than to try to fool himself that it was because of the bed – he had slept in narrower and more uncomfortable ones, and he never had a problem with sleeping in an unfamiliar place. Surely it was foolish, because it had only been over a week, but…

Without Valjean by his side, he found it difficult to sleep. Even more difficult when he knew that Valjean wasn’t even in the same building. His mind turned endlessly towards the Palais, wondering if Valjean was comfortable in the bare interrogation room; if he had slept at all the last night; if his appeal would go through. And if he was already wondering… then why not pray for it? Pray and keep Valjean in his thoughts, out of some half-formed wish that the man would know?

 _Fool_ , he chastised himself. _Selfish._ But his heart was a disobedient thing ever since the rotting wood had shattered to reveal the green core beneath. It ached now, deep and relentless, as he dropped his head down onto the side of the bed that should not be empty.

After a moment, he shook his head hard. There was no use in dwelling on such things; it would not help Valjean in any way. He stood up, walking into the bathroom to shower and dress. It would help wake him up: he knew he would need his full faculties with him in order to deal with Frey.

The moment he walked out of the room Frey gave him into the kitchen, he knew he was right.

Frey was sitting at the kitchen table with a small boy on his thigh and a slightly bigger boy peeping over his elbow. Azelma sat beside him, head resting on a hand.

“No,” Frey was saying, his voice more patient than Javert had ever heard it sound. “You carry the number over _here_ when it comes to division. It’s different from multiplication. Division makes less, multiplication makes more, remember?”

“But that’s _stupid_ ,” Bressole said, pouting. “Why can’t it all be solved the same way?”

“You’re the one who is stupid,” Hughes rolled his eyes.

“Don’t call your brother stupid,” Frey chastised, flicking his fingers against Hugues’s temple. When the boy huffed, Frey turned towards the younger brother.

“Different problems require different solutions,” he said, absent-mindedly ruffling the small boy’s hair, making the haphazard brown curls even more haphazard. “You can’t solve everything with just one solution.”

“Why not?” Hughes asked. When Frey raised an eyebrow at him, he crossed his arms. “Bressole’s question was stupid because it’s _math_ and everyone knows that multiplication and division work differently, but you’re not just talking about math, are you, Mathieu?”

“M. Mathieu,” Azelma corrected softly.

“Eh, it’s fine, they can call me whatever they want,” Frey shrugged. He looked down at the older boy, reaching out with his pen and poking him on the nose. Hugues’s eyes crossed. His nose wrinkled.

“Things work in life a little like they do in math,” he told both boys. “Different problems require different solutions. Sometimes, it even requires different people to solve them. Math is actually simpler than life.”

“Everything seems to be simpler than life,” Bressole complained. When Frey handed him the pen, his tongue stuck out a little as he bent over the paper on the table.

“Well, life is the hardest problem anyone needs to solve,” Frey said.

“Not really,” Hughes said. He dropped his head onto the table; his chin was barely high enough to reach over the edge. “It used to be easier on the streets before Azelma found us. There were only two options: if we have money, then we have food; if we don’t, then we go hungry. If we’re hungry enough then we die.”

Frey closed his eyes. He looked pained for a moment before he rested his hand on top of Hugues’s head. “That,” he said gently, “is not a good thing.”

“Why not? It’s easier. Nothing with all this rubbish about math or grammar or such things.” Hughes sounded as reasonable as a boy who hadn’t even reached double-digits age could sound.

Opening his mouth, Frey was about to reply when he caught sight of Javert leaning against the kitchen’s wall. He nodded to him, “Morning.”

“Monsieur!” The boys grinned. “You’re awake!”

Bressole flailed his arms around. “Mathieu is teaching us math!”

“I can see that,” Javert said. He walked towards the small group, ruffling Azelma’s hair as he passed her. She gave him a bleary glare, immediately trying to pat down her hair.

“He’s better at it than the teacher at school!” Bressole added. “Less boring!”

Frey snorted. “Your teacher at school has a lot of students while I only have the two of you this morning,” he said dryly. “If you come to watch me teach at my school, I’m probably just as boring.”

“Do you stand at the board and write things?” Hughes squinted at him suspiciously.

“Yes,” Frey nodded solemnly. “I do.”

“Peh,” the boy said. “You’re boring then.”

“Maybe so,” Frey’s lips twitched. He looked from one boy to the other before he nudged at Bressole. “We need to clear the table. Now that Javert’s awake, we can have breakfast.”

Javert raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t have to wait for me,” he said.

“I wanted to,” Azelma yawned. She straightened, stretching up with both hands above her head. Her fingers combed through her thick auburn hair. “And the rest of them decided to wait with me.”

“ _Mathieu_ wanted to wait with you,” Hughes corrected, his bottom lip sticking out. “Then he started teaching us math when we didn’t.”

Looking from Azelma to Frey, then to the boys, Javert couldn’t help his lips curving up slightly. “Thank you, then.”

“Now all of you get out,” Azelma said. “You’ll just get in my way in the kitchen.”

“It’s my house,” Frey pointed out.

“And all you had in your fridge before I arrived was takeout and bread,” she rolled her eyes at him. “Get out, all of you.”

“Azelma’s food is nice!” Bressole chirped. He jumped off Frey’s thigh, tugging on the man’s wrist. “You’ll like it when you eat it, I promise.”

Frey let himself be dragged for a moment before he looked at Azelma again. Javert watched the man carefully, but his eyes never seemed to drift anywhere below Azelma’s face, and he didn’t linger inappropriately long either.

“If you’re still tired, I can take the boys to school instead,” he said quietly. 

“No,” Azelma shook her head. “If you do that, people would start talking, and I’d rather not. The boys hear enough of that already.”

Bressole tugged on Frey’s wrist again even as the man looked as if he would protest. After a moment, he sighed, nodding as he left the kitchen. Hughes followed behind him, very much like a duckling despite the sulk writ all over his face.

When they were out of earshot, Javert turned to Azelma. “Are you comfortable being here?” he asked. “I’m heading down to the Palais today. I can ask if the police or the courts will allow you to stay at the house at Rue Plumet instead of confiscating it.”

Azelma looked at him for a moment before she sighed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Her eyes darted towards the doorway where Frey had just left. “I don’t think I was wrong when I said that he’s a good man, Monsieur. I’ll be fine.”

“Still,” Javert protested.

She ducked her head down. “Besides, I’ll rather stay here. It feels safer than being alone with the boys in that empty house.”

Javert bit his lip. He felt incredibly guilty that moment, because he had practically forced her to agree to stay at the house even when he knew that Valjean would eventually be on trial and hence have his assets frozen. He opened his mouth.

“Don’t apologise, Monsieur,” Azelma said, her voice a little muffled as she dropped an apron over her head. She flashed him a smile over her shoulder as she tied the strings. “It was good to stay at that house. It’s… it’ll be good to stay here too. Thank you.”

He was reaching out and resting his hand on her head before he knew it. She ducked a little, but her smile was pleased as he ruffled her hair again. “If there’s anything…”

“I’ll tell you,” she promised. Then she shrugged off his hand, walking forward and nudging him out of the kitchen. “When I said that you will all get in my way, I mean you too, Monsieur.”

“Fine, fine,” he held up his hands.

In the living room, Frey had laid out the paper and pen again. This time, Hughes was seated on the couch while Bressole had reclaimed his seat on Frey’s lap. Frey looked up as he entered.

“I’m dropping by Notre Dame later,” he stated. “Do you want to come?”

Javert blinked. He searched his mind: he would have to be at the Palais this afternoon to continue helping Verdier with his cases, but that was hours later. Besides, he suspected that Frey’s ‘dropping by’ was far more than he made it sound. Things always seemed to be, with this man.

He shrugged. “Why not?”

***

“M. Chabouillet has heard of you,” Javert said, tipping his head back as Frey hooked the chain onto his collar.

Frey cocked his head to the side, his hand loosely curled around the metal links. Then he shrugged. “That’s probably from when I was arrested for being a suspected rebel.”

“Likely,” Javert nodded. He looked at Frey curiously out of the corner of his eye as the man bent to tie his shoelaces. “How did you get out of that without revealing who you really are?”

Lifting his head, Frey chuckled lightly. “I simply told the arresting officer that I have twenty alibis for my absence at the barricades that night,” he said. At Javert’s incredulous look, he laughed harder. “I had class that night.”

“Ah,” Javert nodded. “And they accepted it?” The barricades didn’t last just the night, after all; there was the chance, however small, that someone could’ve joined after the first attack.

“They did,” Frey nodded. He grabbed the apartment’s keycard from the shoe rack along with a messenger bag he slung over his shoulders. “Their reasoning was, I think, that I was ‘just a stupid motherfucker’ and that if I had joined the barricades, my head ‘would’ve been splattered all ‘round the damned pavement.’”

He threw back a smirk. “I have good hearing.”

Javert snorted. Somehow, Frey managed to insert quotes marks into his voice until Javert could practically hear the coarseness of some of the police officers’ Parisian accents. 

“That’s not according to proper procedure,” he shook his head, falling three steps behind by rote now despite the different footsteps, different man. “But they _were_ accurate in that you weren’t at the barricades.”

Frey shrugged.

“Why weren’t you?”

“Queens against pawns,” he answered, swinging the hand holding onto Javert’s chain over his shoulder. “I’ve told you that before.”

He hesitated for a moment before he laughed a little. “Besides, if I had been there – or worse still, Philippe – we would’ve been recognised by the head of the National Guards. Then what was meant to be a barricade for freedom would have become a petty feud within the House of Napoleon.”

Javert made an affirmative sound as they walked down the stairs and onto Rue de Babylone. There was no chance of them speaking without the danger of being overheard now, so he gave Frey’s words some consideration.

There was no way anyone would have believed that a member of the House of Napoleon wasn’t the leader of whatever group they ended up in. Even if Frey or M. Philippe were honest with the Guards, they would have only been faced with disbelief.

Unlike the police who picked their men from the urban and rural poor – with certain exceptions, like M. Chabouillet – the National Guards were entirely comprised of landowning citizens; men who owed their fortunes either directly to Our Great Napoleon or indirectly to the policies of Our Second Napoleon. In other words, like most of the populace whom the law served well, they practically worshipped the House.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he followed behind Frey as they made the final turn towards Notre Dame. They faced the western façade with its row of Blessed Virgin sculptures, and Javert bowed, instinctively crossing himself even as Frey strode towards the Cathedral without even seeming to notice it.

“Closer,” Frey threw over his shoulder. Javert took two long strides, coming behind Frey’s shoulders as the man stopped right in front of a wall.

As Javert watched, he spread his fingers over the stone. Slowly, he slid downwards, one finger crooked and pressing against stone until it _shifted_. Javert’s eyes widened. Here, at one of the points where the Cathedral had been repaired after the civil wars, the workmanship was slipshod: one of the stone bricks was not stone at all, but _rubber_ , and rubber that was hollow within, at that.

Frey took out a sheaf of paper from his inner jacket pocket. It had been folded over three times, and he folded it length-wise again it was a single long strip. Then he pushed it into the hollow middle of the false stone until it disappeared.

Then he shoved his hands into his pockets, picked up Javert’s chain, and walked away towards one of the benches that lined the path right outside of the Cathedral’s western façade. Javert nearly stumbled over himself as he followed him, and fell onto the stone bench – he slid his hand over the bench to ensure that it really _was_ stone – when Frey nodded to him to sit down.

“Did you remove that block yourself?” he hissed under his breath.

There was a moment when Frey stared at him, startled, before he threw his head back and laughed. “No,” he said, the word burbling out of him through chuckles. “Christ, no. Javert, I’m not _that_ good.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t even me who found it.”

Javert blinked, cocking his head to the side. “Then who?” he asked, though he had a suspicion.

“You’ll see,” Frey said. He stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles, before he flipped open his messenger bag. He threw something over to Javert: a sketchpad.

“I don’t draw,” he pointed out.

“You don’t have to,” Frey shrugged. “You hold a pencil with a sketchpad on your lap and stare intently at Notre Dame: no one will pay any attention to you then.”

He laid out his own on his lap, flipping over to a blank page that looked rather yellowed and creased at the edges. Javert wondered how long he had been pretending to draw while using that particular page, and he shook his head to himself before he followed suit.

After ten minutes passed, Javert realised that Frey was right. Plenty of people passed them – it was early morning, and those men and women with time for leisure were taking walks down this path – and their eyes seemed to slide right past both men the moment they registered the pencil and sketchpads. Even Javert’s collar and chain, in full display and piercingly bright in the sun, had become invisible.

What was it that these men and women saw? Possibly, given Frey’s wardrobe today, nothing more than a rich art student and his bored slave.

Javert would make a remark about this – possibly about Frey making a better spy than Javert himself would – but there was a member of the National Guard who was walking towards the cathedral. The man had a hand on the butt on his rifle, laying it straight over his shoulders, and his every single step was crisp and perfectly characteristic to his uniform.

But Javert recognised him instantly. Perhaps it was the hint of dark curls through the hat or the brief flash of blue eyes as he passed the two of them, it didn’t matter: Javert knew that it was M. Philippe the moment the supposed Guard went straight towards Frey’s ‘stone’ block, standing there for a few moments.

Then he turned around and walked past them without another glance.

“A member of the National Guard has no business speaking to an artist,” Frey said casually. “We see each other every day, if only out of the corner of our eyes, but we rarely speak.”

“Why?” Javert asked, unbearably curious. M. Philippe had been in a National Guard’s uniform the last he saw him too.

“Part of it is that no one will ever question a National Guard’s actions,” Frey told him. “They simply assume that he is on some sort of mission given directly from Louis-Jérôme.” 

His lips twisted. “But, to put it frankly, Javert: that uniform is the only way Philippe can leave his wing in Fountainebleau.”

Javert stilled completely. “What do you mean?”

Turning away, Frey fixed his eyes upon the large glass-and-stone flower at the centre of the western face of Notre Dame. “He’s not allowed to leave the castle unless accompanied by guards,” Frey said quietly. “And his guards have strict orders to not allow him to go beyond a kilometre of the castle unless it is for official events where his presence is required. Then he is to travel with an entourage, with a Guard with him at all times.”

That was… Javert swallowed. He had never been a man to imagine the lives of those in the glittering castle, but nigh-imprisonment would surely not have been on the list if he had.

“Why?”

“Officially, the reason is for Philippe’s protection.” Frey gave him a smile; a mirthless twist of the lips. “Unofficially… well, Louis-Jérôme is not a stupid man. He suspects that his only son and heir has different politics than he does, and he believes that keeping him locked up will keep him obedient.”

“Is that your opinion,” Javert said slowly, “or is that the truth?”

Frey looked at him for a moment before he chuckled, dark and bitter. “Half and half, I suppose,” he sighed. “I don’t have the most unbiased opinion of the man, I admit.”

Not that Javert expected him to; not with all that he had heard about what the man had done to Frey and his parents.

After a moment, Frey went back to staring blankly at Notre Dame. “Do you know how Philippe’s mother died?”

Javert stared at him. He could tell by now that Frey was leading him somewhere with these little pieces of information scattered like breadcrumbs, but knowing that there was a path didn’t mean realising where he did.

“She… fell ill, didn’t she?” he said after a moment of trying to remember.

“That’s the official story given,” Frey said. “The unofficial version is that she killed herself. Hung herself using her bedsheets slung over the curtain hooks of her window.”

His shoulders shook, and he laughed. It was a twisted, ugly-sounding thing. “I promise: that’s the absolute truth. I was the one who found her.”

After a moment, Javert realised that he was opening and closing his mouth like a particularly stunned fish. He dragged a hand through his hair, and simply waited.

“He wasn’t always like this, you know,” Frey continued. “Louis-Jérôme, I mean. My mother used to tell me stories about him when he was younger, about him being a boy full of dreams of times long, long past. When words like ‘knights’ still had meaning, and princes and princesses were more than just mockeries.”

Drawing a hand over his face, he shrugged. “I don’t know when he grew so afraid,” he said. “He’s been afraid of everything for as long as I remember: his own people, his wife, his sister, his father. Even his own son. Especially of me, even after I became less his nephew and more a glorified servant to be ordered around the house.

“Sometimes I think that he looks at himself as the only human standing in a world of rabid beasts, all of them wanting to tear him apart.” He laughed a little; it sounded more like a sob. “Sometimes I think that he believes so much in that illusion that he is trying his best to make it true.”

Javert looked at him. He had no idea how to deal with this horribly tangled web of relations and broken people that Frey called family; he was an orphan, practically made himself into one. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t understand; not for Azelma, and not for Frey.

But he knew, without a doubt, that no matter what Frey might say, he still loved his uncle. Unwillingly and despite himself, perhaps, but he still did.

“Why did your aunt kill herself?” he asked quietly.

“No one knows,” Frey said. His eyes fell shut, and he let out a sigh. “She didn’t leave a suicide note. But… Louis-Jérôme had imprisoned her like how he now has Philippe, supposedly for protection against assassins. And she was a free spirit. She believed, like my mother did, in the Republic. In the inherent goodness of the people.

“I like to think that she did it as a last act of rebellion. The only way she could make Louis-Jérôme listen.”

Hesitantly, Javert reached out. His hand brushed Frey’s arm, and the man flinched so violently the moment that it connected that he drew it back immediately.

Shaking his head, Frey took a deep breath. Then he opened his eyes. This time, his smile was a little wry and almost familiar. “You’re wondering why I told you this, aren’t you.”

Javert nodded.

“You said once that Philippe and I are powerful men. Perhaps we are. Louis-Jérôme is the most powerful man in this country. But all of us, from the highest to the lowest…” his smile widened, turning bitter at the edges. “We’re all the same in the end, Javert.

“We’re all wretches, separated only by degrees and types of wretchedness. And yet, most of us cannot even see beyond those surface differences. We claw at each other, drawing blood, to make believe that we’re better than one another in an effort to deny our own wretchedness. We do such futile things instead of trying to destroy the cold hand that threatens to devastate all of us. We do such futile things, because…”

“Because it’s easier,” Javert finished for him. “Because we’re blind.”

Gutters and muck, wretches and blood. It was all the same in the end.

Frey smiled, but Javert was already shaking his head.

“You shouldn’t tell this to me,” he said quietly. “You should’ve told Valjean instead.”

“No,” Frey said. He looked away, turning up to the mid-afternoon skies. “You see, I believe in the Republic. But I believe in the Republic because Philippe does, and I believe in Philippe.”

He glanced at Javert, shrugging. “You’re the only man I know who fights tooth and nail for something he can barely believe in, for the sake of the man he loves.”

Javert choked. 

While he was trying to hack up his lung, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, comprehension slowly dawn on Frey’s face.

“Different type of love!” he yelped, somehow still managing to keep his voice low. “ _Very_ different. Oh my God! Stop _thinking it_! I can _see_ you thinking it! That’s disgusting! He’s my _brother_. Literally! Not in… _Stop thinking it_!”

Frey buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking. And somehow, Javert found himself laughing as well. Not because this was actually hilarious – especially not with the implication that Frey _knew_ exactly what was between him and Valjean – but…

This was the first time ever since he had met him that Frey was acting his age. Like this, helplessly laughing while trying to hide his flushing face with one hand while the other one flailed around, the age and weariness in his eyes had completely disappeared. Right now, he looked like a young man; a boy barely-grown. The manipulative strategist capable of using everything to his advantage was entirely gone.

Javert decided that he liked him _much_ better this way. He reminded Javert of some of the junior officers, one of those hapless things who could barely tie their shoelaces without tripping over their own too-large feet.

Unable to help himself, he reached out and ruffled Frey’s hair hard.

Immediately, Frey froze, falling silent. His hand fell back down to his knees, and he looked at Javert with hooded eyes. After a moment, he shook his head.

“I’m starting to think that you’re doing me a favour now instead of the other way around,” he said softly.

Cautiously, Javert reached out again. He placed his hand on top of Frey’s head, and Frey did not flinch away.

“Call it a mutual favour,” he said, just as quiet. “A debt repaid.”

“Yeah,” Frey said. He straightened, and Javert let his hand drop back to his side.

“I can live with that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I make it a policy that all of my characters - original or otherwise - are not villains exactly. (Except for the Patron-Minette, but that's partly Hugo and mostly because they're plot devices here, sorry.) Every single character is the hero of their own untold story. I'm writing this entirely from Javert's POV, which means that the heroes of _this_ story are Valjean and Javert. But everyone has their own horrific trauma and everybody's lives suck. 
> 
> Because this is a _Les Misérables_ fic.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert witnesses a trial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Book III Chapter Ten: Virtuous Man**
> 
> **Warnings:** Law procedures and arguments. Also, Tholomyés.

Valjean’s appeal was sent in the day after his re-arrest was submitted by M. Chabouillet, and it took barely three days before the Cour de Cassation decided on a date: another seven days, two of which were the weekend where the courts were closed. The entire affair would seem strange if Javert had not already learned to recognise Frey and M. Philippe’s fingerprints over it.

He arrived with Azelma and Frey to the courthouse to find Cosette and Pontmercy already present. Cosette’s lips were thinned, her face pale: the moment Javert sat down next to her on the audience’s bench, she turned to him.

“Will you please explain to me, Monsieur, how Tholomyés is allowed to take this case when he’s under professional inquiry?” she asked, steel-rust poisoning the usual sweetness of her voice.

Javert opened his mouth before he closed it. His head turned: sure enough, Tholomyes was walking in now, heading straight towards the defence’s bench. Opposite him, Pontmercy was shuffling through his papers, keeping his head down. Even here, Javert could see the whiteness of his knuckles.

“He pulled a few strings.” It was Frey who answered, and his voice was dark and grim. “He told the bar that he wanted another chance, and they gave him this one. It’s part of why the appeal went through so quickly.”

On Frey’s other side, Azelma’s eyes narrowed slightly. Days of living with Frey had not disabused her of the notion that he was a good man, but she was still suspicious of him. Sometimes – right now – Javert’s mouth itched to tell her just who Frey was, just how he knew all that he did.

But it was not his secret to tell, and though Javert had never been good at subterfuge, he made an effort now. Not for Frey’s sake entirely, of course, but because he would not wish to risk losing the man’s support for Valjean, or even an ounce of his influence being used for Valjean’s sake.

Cosette’s head had dropped downwards after Frey spoke, and she stared at her hands. “So he has a very strong reason to make sure that Papa and Marius lose this case,” she said quietly. “An entirely selfish reason.” 

Her hands clasped together, and she shook her head. A laugh escaped out of her; it was bitter. “I do not want to hate anyone, but he makes it so terribly _difficult_.”

Javert reached out, placing a hand on Cosette’s shoulder. “Trust that Valjean is a good man,” he told her softly. “Trust in Pontmercy’s abilities and the arguments you helped him craft.”

Dark eyes turned towards him, a little teary behind glasses. Cosette huffed, the sound akin to a giggle, and she took off her glasses to wipe at her eyes. “The arguments both of us helped him craft, you mean,” she said, her lips curling up towards Javert. “We couldn’t have done it without all that you told us about Papa’s life before I met him.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Javert said, because that was true and he could think of nothing else.

“No,” Cosette replied. She replaced her glasses, and her gaze was sharp behind them. “If there’s anything I have learned, Monsieur, it is that the least anyone can do is nothing. That is what I had done for my entire life until Marius, after all.” Her smile turned a little wobbly. “So for you to have done something, it is… it is a mark of your character. It is a mark of what you feel for Papa.”

Turning away, Javert swallowed. All words had fled his mind. Even though it had been days since that conversation with Frey where he had inadvertently given himself and Valjean away, he still could not find a way to even _think_ about the idea of others knowing what was between them, much less addressing it.

Thankfully, the judge entered at the moment. As Monsieur le Président took his place in the stands, the guard called for silence in the courtroom. When all chatter fell away, the door opened once more.

Valjean walked into the courtrooms with his hands cuffed in front of him and his head held high. Black-uniformed and black-visored guards walked behind and on both sides of him, their guns a loud statement in the silent room. But none looked at them: the crowd’s eyes were all on Valjean himself as he was led towards the accused’s stand.

“Such a loud crowd for a thirty-eight years old case,” Monsieur le Président began, sounding almost amused. “I would ask for the reason why you are all here, but I suspect that I already know.”

Clearing his throat, he banged the gavel. The sound reverberated around the room, signalling the beginning of the proceedings.

As the judge began to outline the appeal, Javert cast his eyes around the room. He recognised many of the faces here: Valjean’s students from the school, the volunteers and the needy from the shelters. Clarisse caught his eye and quirked a lopsided smile, and Javert nodded to her before his gaze drifted away, taking in the reporters and the other bystanders – mostly students from Paris’s universities, dressed similarly to how Frey was today – before his breath caught.

There, sitting at the very end, near the doors, was Listolier. Javert met the man’s gaze when he turned around; did not turn away even as he glared. This case was not just Valjean’s, Javert knew, but Listolier’s presence here made him all the more aware that Tholomyés was on trial as well.

The man himself was clearing his throat, shuffling his papers and making them thump against the wood of his stand. He stepped out of it, scanning around the room before he spoke.

“Before I begin my argument proper, I will make a statement about this case,” Tholomyés’s voice rang out loud and resonant in the courtroom.

“This is not merely about a case from thirty-eight years ago about a stolen loaf of bread and a broken windowpane. That case has been settled long ago; the accused has admitted to his guilt. No, your honour, ladies and gentlemen, this is about all the crimes Jean Valjean has committed afterwards: another case of theft, the breaking of his parole, and the years and countless charges of fraud.”

Tholomyés allowed a moment to let that sink in. Javert’s hands were clenching on his knees, nails digging into flesh. Though Pontmercy had already guessed that this was the argument Tholomyés would make, to hear it in the man’s oily voice was almost too much for him to bear.

Azelma reached over Frey, placing a hand on his arm. Javert glanced at her, nodding, before she withdrew, satisfied that he was now calm.

“Look upon the accused now, your honour, ladies and gentlemen. What do you see? I see, very clearly, a habitual criminal. Even if we speak about nothing but the first crime he committed, we cannot forget that he did so at the age of eighteen: the very moment he became a man. He broke a shop’s window and stole a loaf of bread. A minor crime, perhaps; one that should not condemn him.

“But let us all remind ourselves of the testimony of his very first victim. The baker at Faverolles said once that if Jean Valjean had waited until morning, or knocked upon his door, he would have given him the loaf of bread _for nothing_. Yet Jean Valjean had decided to steal instead of ask: now, your honour, ladies and gentlemen, does that not tell us that he is already a criminal?”

Valjean’s head was still raised, but his eyes had lowered. His hands were clutched tightly together between his knees. Javert bit the inside of his cheek, using the slight pain to distract himself from the near-overwhelming urge to walk over to place a hand on his shoulder, or even draw him into an embrace.

Taking a deep breath, he focused on Tholomyés again.

“Even that was not his first crime! Only the first one that he was caught for. Within Faverolles, it was well-known that Jean Valjean was a thief and a poacher. He took fruits from neighbours’ gardens by climbing over their walls. He shot animals from the grounds of another neighbour. All of these were known, though there had been no witnesses. Worse still, he had misled his sisters’ children: there is a testimony from his first trial from a woman who lived next to him who said that those children always came begging for milk, lying that their mother would pay for it. She never did; the woman always gave them the milk out of the charity of her heart.”

The charity could not have been much, Javert thought, if she spoke to the courts about it the very moment she could. Javert’s lips twisted.

“He was only sentenced to five years in Toulon for his crimes. But he served nineteen. Why? Because he is a habitual criminal, your honour, ladies and gentlemen. Jean Valjean tried to escape four times. Once, he attacked a guard and landed him in the infirmary. Three escapes for three more years, one escape with assault for five; in the end, he spent nineteen years in prison. Surely it was just and well-earned for his actions?”

Once, Javert knew, he would be nodding vigorously to those words like some of the audience members – such as Listolier – were doing now. But Javert knew now he was mistaken, and the righteousness that had always sat within him – cold and sure – had turned into the burning red flames of anger.

He was about to bite the inside of his cheek again when he felt a hand close around his wrist, nails digging between the thin bones. Javert jerked, his eyes flickering from Tholomyés to Cosette. She was staring at the man with eyes so dark with hatred that Javert could not help but feel breathless from it, and he hesitantly placed an arm on her elbow.

“Don’t let yourself be overtaken by this,” he whispered into her ear, careful to keep his voice low. “Your father will not thank you for it.”

She did not turn towards him, but she did nod, her grip loosening slightly. It would have to do for now.

“Nineteen years in prison should have wiped out all wish for crime from any man, but not Jean Valjean. Crime is within his blood. A bare few days after he was paroled, he stole again. This time, from a Bishop.” Tholomyés paused once more for dramatic effect. “Of course, the Bishop’s testimony was that the silver found on Jean Valjean was a gift, but surely, given all we know of him, we can see that to be a kind-hearted lie. And even if it was not…

“Jean Valjean squandered the Bishop’s gift of silver, your honour, ladies and gentlemen. He used it to lie: he ran to a small town named Montreuil-sur-Mer and created the persona of a M. Madeleine. He used the money the Bishop gave him to create the persona of a man named Madeleine, surely through paying people to hack into government computers to make such a man exist when he never had before.”

Tholomyés’s lips twisted, and he shook his head. “Every time he signed his name, he committed fraud. And when he was found out – _exposed_ – he assaulted an officer. He ran _again_. He created _another_ new persona, using the money to kidnap a child and go into hiding. All of the money he had earned as M. Madeleine – all of the money he earned using _fraud_ and which should belong to the government – has never been recovered. That, too, is another theft.”

Taking a deep breath, Tholomyés’s eyes turned towards the judge’s stand. He met Monsieur le Président’s gaze for a moment before he scanned the crowd.

“We see here in the accused’s stand a habitual criminal, your honour, ladies and gentlemen. One whose criminality could not be rid of by prison; one who has been on the run from the law for the entirety of his life. I bid you sincerely to think what a man like this deserves.”

He took a bow, bending himself almost into half as he swept his hand outwards.

“I rest my case,” he finished, and walked back towards his stand.

There were red half-moon marks on Javert’s wrist; Cosette had finally relinquished her grip. She looked at him with apology in her eyes, but Javert only shook his head, lips curving up into a wry smile.

“That’s not…” Azelma said suddenly, her voice a whisper that cut through all four of them. “That’s not _right_. All that he said… that’s not right.”

“No, it’s not,” Cosette agreed, her voice tight. “He’s wrong about… about so much. He’s wrong about _everything_. Papa isn’t… he isn’t…” She ducked her head, a strangled noise escaping her. 

Javert placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it awkwardly. “That is what the law sees him to be,” he told her and Azelma both. “That is what we’re trying to change.”

The girls exchanged a glance before they both nodded. Azelma tugged at the ends of her hair, and Cosette polished her glasses with her dress. Javert looked at them both, confirming that they were calm, before he looked at Frey.

Frey was staring at Pontmercy, his eyes bright and lips curled into a fierce smile. “Come on now, M. Pontmercy,” he said under his breath. “Come on now. Be a friend of the abased _now_.”

Pontmercy’s single step out of the prosecutor’s stand silenced the courtroom of its small whispers. Several of the reporters leaned forward, adjusting their camera-glasses. Pontmercy looked at all of them, meeting their gazes briefly before he turned to give a low nod to the judge.

“The last time I stood before you, your honour, ladies and gentlemen, it was for the sake of another man,” he began quietly. “But I was fighting not only for that man, but fighting for the law to recognise circumstances along with crimes. That is, once more, my argument here.”

He took another step outwards. His hands, empty of any papers, were hanging loose by his side, his shoulders relaxed. The usually nervous and awkward young man Javert knew had disappeared, replaced by this confident creature that he could barely recognise. He seemed to be entirely powered by the burning flame within him; one so strong that it showed through his eyes.

“M. Tholomyés has told all of you of Jean Valjean’s crimes. Once more, I am not here to refute them. I am here, instead, to give you the circumstances in which these crimes were committed. For we cannot judge a man without knowing his reasons: they are what separates a habitual criminal from a good man driven into unlawfulness in order to be just, merciful, and honourable.”

Javert caught his breath. That line was _not_ in the draft he had read the night before. He found himself leaning forward, hands spreading on the banister ahead of him. The wood was slightly splintered here, but he ignored the slight pain, focusing entirely on Pontmercy.

“Jean Valjean was convicted in the winter of 2097, a handful of years after the unification that Our Great Napoleon gave the lands, but peace was still a far-off dream. He was born as one of those left desolate by the civil wars; his parents were both orphan children of orphans, without surnames. He worked as a tree pruner in Faverolles; one of the few honest occupations available to those like him.”

He took a deep breath. “It was winter; all the plants were dormant, so what trees needed pruning? Even outside of winter, who would hire a tree pruner in a time where most saw machines to do a better job? Still, Jean Valjean tried his best to make an honest living: he did odd jobs; he lived from hand to mouth. From his hand to the mouths of his sister’s children, in fact: his sister never paid for the milk from his neighbour, for it was he who took the burden off of her shoulders. That, too, was in the neighbour’s testimony.

“There were seven children. They were poor. It was winter, and the chill brought on illness. His youngest nephew was ill. Jean Valjean was eighteen years old, and he had been hungry for a long time. He saw bread in a window, bread that would be thrown out in the morning for it had grown too stale to sell, but not to eat. He made an impulsive decision: he broke the window, and took the bread.”

Pontmercy paused. He shook his head. “M. Tholomyés mentioned theft of fruit and poaching. But can you blame a man with children and a sister for trying to provide for them? For attempting to put food on their plates in the middle of winter? Can you blame a man – no, not a man, a _boy_ , for he was barely grown – for a mistake he made out of hunger, out of desperation?

“Your honour, ladies and gentlemen: I cannot.” Pontmercy’s eyes narrowed, and he looked from the judge to the audience’s benches. “I cannot, for to blame him is to blame every adult for loving a child that shares their blood. I cannot, for to blame him is to claim that it is _fair_ that there were people going _hungry_ while food was in front of them.” His voice rose. “I cannot, for to blame him is to admit that those dark times were just and righteous when we have spent so much effort trying to move away from them!”

Silence reigned in the courtroom. Pontmercy’s chest heaved just once before he ducked his head, gaining control of himself. When he looked up again, the flames in his eyes were burning even brighter.

“I shall not attempt to speak of Toulon. How could I, when I have never been in prison myself? How could I, when I do not know what it is that prison does to a man?” Out of the corner of his eye, Javert saw Tholomyés’s mouth twist in displeasure. “Let me speak of M. Madeleine instead. There were many first-hand witness accounts of that man. There were recordings of the trial in Arras where, as M. Tholomyés said, Jean Valjean was exposed.

“Before I speak of Arras, or of Montreuil-sur-Mer, let me speak of Digne. Why Digne? As M. Tholomyés told you, Jean Valjean broke his parole by taking silver from a Bishop. That was the Bishop of Digne. In Digne, according to the witnesses in the town, Jean Valjean arrived in rags. He attempted to find lodgings. He had money then; money earned rightfully during his years in prison. But he was turned away because he was known to be an ex-convict; a dangerous man. He had tried to find work, but, similarly, he was turned away.

“A loaf of bread. A broken windowpane.” Pontmercy paused. When he spoke again, his voice lowered. “Should that be all that condemns a man throughout his life? Should that be all that labels him a convict, casting him from the pale of society, his mistake following him like an insistent shadow for the rest of his life? Whether Jean Valjean stole from the Bishop of Digne cannot be decided in the courts, for the Bishop is dead. However… _could_ Jean Valjean, could _any_ ex-convict, have lived as an honest man if he tried? Even if he had repented, were there any – could we _expect_ there to be any – who would give him a second chance?”

Pontmercy shook his head. The reporters who had leaned in when he started speaking in a whisper closed in even further.

“He could not. Shall we blame those who were unkind, then? Or shall we say, instead, that those who were unkind were just like _us_ , for how many of us would look upon an ex-convict and see him as a man beyond the yellow papers he was obliged to carry and to show? Could we look upon such a man and say, he is a good man, a virtuous man?

“M. Tholomyés called Jean Valjean a habitual criminal. _I_ say instead that he is a virtuous man. Let me now move from Digne to Montreuil-sur-Mer. Perhaps M. Tholomyés is right: Jean Valjean did use the Bishop’s silver to pay hackers. But he established a factory within a desolate town. A factory that provided jobs for the entirety of the town, in fact; a factory that helped lower the tax arrears for the town to nearly _nothing_.” Pontmercy walked back to his stand, picking up a single piece of paper from his pile. “I have reports here from the tax collectors themselves. Everyone paid their taxes accordingly, without complaint. That, your honour, ladies and gentlemen, can only happen when a town is prosperous. It was M. Madeleine – it was _Jean Valjean_ – who made the town prosperous.

“Not only that, but he established schools. He established a hospital. He gave away the Maire residence to be made into an infirmary, much like how the Bishop of Digne had given away his Bishop’s residence to Digne’s hospital.” 

Pontmercy put the paper back down. He took a deep breath. “If any man does so, will you not see him as a good man, a virtuous man? If a man wears mourning colours for a Bishop of a town far away and said that he owed him his life, would you not say that he is a loyal man, a grateful man? If such a man saved a man trapped beneath a cart, a man who had spread terrible rumours about him throughout town, would you not call him a forgiving man? If such a man goes to Mass every Sunday night, and gives plenty of what he earns to the Church, will you not call him a pious man?

“The town of Montreuil-sur-Mer called him all this. Yet, afterwards, when Jean Valjean was exposed as a convict in Arras, the town turned their backs on him. The factory, the schools, and the hospital – they all meant nothing. Their prosperity, their children’s education, and their own health – all meant nothing. Because the man whose hands built it all was a convict.”

Valjean’s hands were starting to shake. Pontmercy’s eyes did not turn towards him, instead steadily shifting from the audience to the judge and then back again. Javert, however, could not look away.

“The trial at Arras,” Pontmercy continued softly. “It was not the trial of Jean Valjean. It was the trial of a man called Champmathieu, who was mistaken to be Jean Valjean. If he was condemned, then M. Madeleine – the true Valjean – could have gone free. He could have lived in peace, in wealth, with all that he had built. Yet he exposed himself. _Yes_ , he exposed himself, your honour, ladies and gentlemen. He was not caught. He was not found out. He walked in front of the judge and the lawyers, your honour, ladies and gentlemen, and declared: I am Jean Valjean.”

He took a deep breath. “He did so, and he returned once more to being condemned. He did so, and he rescued a man from chains – Champmathieu went free.”

Perhaps Tholomyés’s showmanship was rubbing off, Javert thought wryly, for Pontmercy now paused to allow those words to sink in.

“Why are all of us here, your honour, ladies and gentlemen? Why was Jean Valjean arrested?” His lips curved upwards into a smile, sharp at the edges. “Because Jean Valjean turned himself in. A man running from the law all of his life, M. Tholomyés has said. But he gave himself up willingly to it. The testimony here – from M. Chabouillet, Secretary to the Prefect of the Police – said that Jean Valjean walked into his office and gave himself up. Like in Arras, he exposed the brand on his chest, and he was arrested once more for it. Arrested, handcuffed, with the shadows of prison’s chains once more hanging over his head.

“Jean Valjean walked in and confessed. He did not need to. No one is looking for him; there was a warrant out for his arrest, true, but his case was a dead case. He had disappeared for years. Yet here he stands in front of you, your honour, ladies and gentlemen.” Pontmercy paused. His voice gentled, and he turned to Valjean, speaking to him directly.

“Here you stand, Monsieur.” Javert felt more than heard the sharp intake of breath from the audience as a lawyer addressed a convict with respect. “Here you stand, condemned for your honesty.”

Valjean bowed his head. His hands, cuffed in front of him, folded into loose fists. “You think too well of me,” he said, voice low and soft.

“I do not,” Pontmercy shook his head. “I see you, Monsieur, as the man you are.” He turned back to the judge. “I see this man, Jean Valjean, as a man. He is honest, pious, loyal, and forgiving; he is virtuous; he is _good_. He has committed a theft and was condemned for it. He committed fraud, countless charges for it, but he did not cheat; his actions within false names were good. He built schools; he built a hospital. Even now, under the name Fauchelevent, he reached out to the poor, the desolate, and the abased. He gave them aid; he gave them mercy. Even in this room, there are many who can attest to that.”

Pontmercy walked back towards his stand. His hands rested on the wood, and he leaned forward, eyes burning as they shifted from the judge to the audience.

“Your honour, ladies and gentlemen: I plead with you now to not look upon this man as a convict, but _as a man_. A man like any other, to be judged upon his actions and circumstances and not by the shadows of the past that loom behind him.” He took a breath. “I plead with you to look upon Jean Valjean and understand the circumstances he is in. I plead with you to understand that there is no justice, _none at all_ , when circumstances force a man to be unlawful just to be good.” 

His voice grew even softer and stronger.

“When circumstances force a man to be unlawful just to be able to live.”

With that, he dropped abruptly into a jerky bow, his arms overly stiff by his side. The courtroom did not move a single inch, every single person within it seeming to hold their breaths. Or, Javert suspected, attempting to hold back the need to applaud.

No, that was his own urge. Javert tried to stifle a wry smile. Somehow, despite himself, he found himself respecting Pontmercy.

Funny how he could not find it within himself to admit such a thing when Pontmercy had been defending himself.

After several heartbeats more of absolute stillness, Monsieur le Président banged his gavel. The sound cracked the tension in the room, allowing its inhabitants to breathe again, and Javert closed his eyes, shakily dragging a hand through his own hair.

“As per usual procedure,” the judge said, his voice impassive, “I will announce in seven days either my judgment or the need for a second hearing. Defence and prosecution: prepare your further arguments and possible witnesses in case there is a need.”

Both Tholomyés and Pontmercy bowed towards him.

“Court adjourned.”

Before Javert could give into the urge to move to Valjean – to rush towards him before he was led away – there was a hand gripping onto his arm, holding him in place. He looked at it, then upwards into Cosette’s determined eyes.

“Don’t,” she said softly. “You can’t compromise yourself like this, Monsieur. Not right now.”

“What do you mean?” Javert asked, fighting down the urge to tear himself away.

“Monsieur le Président did not remind Marius and Tholomyés to prepare their arguments during your trial,” she said quietly. “He did so now. There _will_ be a second hearing.”

Javert swallowed. He watched as Valjean was led out of the courtroom, surrounded once more by guards. His hands twitched, his shoulders tense in an effort to not turn.

“That has nothing to do with me,” he said, his own voice sounding distant and unimportant to his own ears.

“It has everything to do with you,” Cosette said. Her hand brushed his jaw, and Javert finally tore himself away from the sight of Valjean’s back to meet her gaze.

“You’re going to be Marius’s witness, Monsieur,” she said, and her smile was dark and fierce. “You gave your testimony this time for Marius’s argument, but in the next hearing… you’ll have to speak for Papa yourself.”

The world tilted on its axis. Javert caught himself on the banister, barely aware of Azelma grabbing hold of his other arm as he stared at Cosette.

“What right does a slave have to testify?” he asked through a hoarse throat.

Cosette’s smile widened. “The right of the police officer who paroled Papa, and the right of the man who tried to arrest him,” she said. “The right of a slave who does not belong to Papa.”

Javert opened his mouth. But before he could say a word, Frey stepped into his line of sight.

“She’s right,” he said. “You have to testify, Javert. Your testimony – as someone who knew Valjean throughout the years, who has seen him at his worst; someone who has been under his power directly – will be the hinge upon which this case would be won.”

Tearing himself out of both girls’ grasps, Javert whirled to stare at the courtroom’s double doors. But Valjean was already long gone, and he clutched blindly at the wooden banister, scraping his palm upon the splinters that Valjean had placed there during Javert’s own trial.

“If I testify, then… then I can…” he heard himself say, hoarsely.

“Yes,” Cosette said. She leaned in, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “You can save him, Monsieur.”

Javert’s knees grew weak. He dropped back down to his seat. It was suddenly overwhelming- no, _terrifying_. So many years he spent condemning Valjean with his words; so many years he spent hunting him as a convict. And now… now that he had too many words to describe the man, now that he was no longer blind and could see the star-brilliance of Valjean’s soul… he could say them once more.

He would be able make the judge – make everyone – see Valjean as they should.

His hands were shaking. He pressed them to his face.

“Will you do it, Monsieur?” Cosette asked. He felt more than saw her sit down beside him, her small hand warm on his arm.

“I…” he started. A laugh suddenly burst out of him, sharp and almost hysterical. “Of course I will.”

Looking at Cosette, he laughed again, shoulders shaking. “Maybe if I say it in front of all; maybe if the judge believes me; then Valjean will as well.”

Cosette’s smile blossomed even further, lighting up her entire face. She threw her arms around him. “Precisely,” she said.

“Let me help, Monsieur,” Azelma said suddenly, elbowing past a surprised Frey to sit next to Javert. Her eyes were bright with flames that were surely caught from Cosette or Pontmercy. “Let me help you draft what you say.”

Her lips quirked upwards, revealing a smile that was no longer tarnished by too-gaunt cheeks. “I want to help, because… he saved me too.”

“He saved us all,” Cosette said. She burbled a laugh, and pulled off her glasses to dab at her eyes with her sleeve. “And now we’re going to set him free.”

“We’re going to set him free,” Javert echoed. His fingers touched his own collar. The metal was no longer heavy; he no longer felt its weight. It was nothing, absolutely nothing, to the invisible one Valjean had worn all these years. The light chain around his shoulders was nothing in comparison to the ones Valjean had dragged behind his limping left foot all these years.

“It is what he deserves,” he said. “It is just.”

They looked at each other, already giddied by the thought. Javert wanted to laugh again, a touch hysterical. Valjean had done so much for him, and now finally – _finally_ – he could give the man what he so dearly wished.

Pontmercy looked a little dazed as he finally walked towards them, as if his speech had taken everything out of him. 

Before he could say a word, Cosette was standing up. She threw her arms around him, hugging him tight past the banister.

“We’ve found you your witness, Marius,” she said, grinning at him. “M. Javert agreed.”

When Pontmercy looked at him, Javert nodded. He didn’t bother to take note of the man’s reaction, his eyes already turning towards the courtroom doors. Valjean would already be in the police wagon by now, shut in that black little box with only a barred window through which to look at the skies.

_This will be the last time_ , he vowed to a man who could not hear him. _After this, you will be free_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes:** In my long notes in Chapter 18/Book III: Chapter 6, I mentioned that my meta about the Champmathieu trial went into a character's mouth, right? That's Marius: his entire starting argument is basically an in-character, placed-in-context rendition of my meta thoughts about the significance of Arras, especially the framing and political ideologies underlying it.
> 
> Sometimes I think I should subtitle this fic ‘The author is a nerd and it shows.’ And then I realised that the subtitle I chose already showed it. So… yeah. Uhm. You were warned?


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert testifies in front of a court.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Book III Chapter Eleven: Unlawful Justice**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Some more law procedures and arguments written by someone who knows nothing of those things, though there are explanations for why things are this way. Explicit depiction of panic attack and self-hatred.

Cosette was right: the trial did go into a second hearing. Not that it was an unexpected decision when it was announced once the court was called to order: Monsieur le Président had sent a message to Pontmercy the day before requesting him to submit the list of the witnesses he wished to call during the trial.

Pontmercy sent it. And now Javert was walking from the audience’s stand towards the centre of the courtroom – the appeals court did not have a specific stand for witnesses, with how rarely the appeals went into the second hearing – while whispers burst out around him. Javert kept his head high, refusing to even try to hide the collar on his neck.

“A slave shouldn’t be on the stands,” Tholomyés objected immediately. “He is not a proper citizen.”

Not only Pontmercy had submitted a list of witnesses, of course: Tholomyés’s chosen list had already gone through a series of questioning. They were all residents of Montreuil-sur-Mer, most of them speaking of “an inherent evil” that they had seen in the Mayor. Javert’s lips had twisted as he listened to them: these were the same people who had eagerly taken jobs that Valjean had offered; the same who had sung his praises when he was Madeleine and then condemned him when he was Valjean.

At least Javert himself was consistent in his behaviour: even if he had, reluctantly, respected the Mayor for his deeds, he suspected him, and never accepted anything from him. Such inconsistency, such _hypocrisy_ , made him sick.

Still, there was a silver lining to this: Thénardier could not be called to the stands, given that his own trial was still proceeding in the Cour de Assize.

“He is not here in the capacity of a slave, your honour,” Pontmercy said, bypassing Tholomyés entirely in his reply – a move that, Javert noted, made a muscle in the man’s cheek twitch. “He is here in the capacity of Jean Valjean’s parole officer and the officer in charge of his arrest after the trial in Arras.”

Tholomyés snorted. “How can we trust anything he says? He is Jean Valjean’s slave.”

Pontmercy shook his head. “He _was_ , indeed,” he said quietly. “He has a new owner now.”

Monsieur le Président looked from one lawyer to the other before his gaze rested on Javert. Javert met it evenly: he had placed too much hope in his testimony to even think about backing down now.

“When M. Pontmercy sent me his list of witnesses, I saw 87452’s name on it,” the judge said. “And I approved it.”

He raised an eyebrow, and Tholomyés ducked his head even as his face darkened in disapproval.

Taking a deep breath, Pontmercy stepped out from behind the prosecutor’s stand. “Place your hand upon the Bible and take the vow,” there was just the slightest hint of hesitation, “87452.”

Javert looked at the Bible brought to him by one of the faceless guards. He nodded, placing his hand upon it. “I – slave number 87452, currently owned by Mathieu Frey of no relation whatsoever to the accused Jean Valjean – solemnly swear that I will speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Pontmercy bit his lip. “Swear it once more,” he ordered. “With your name.”

“I, Javert, no first name,” he stifled the urge to roll his eyes, “solemnly swear that I will speak the truth, and nothing but the truth.”

As the guard withdrew, Javert let his hand drop back to his side, eyes tipping up to meet the judge’s again. 

The man nodded. “You may begin your testimony, 87452.”

It was strange: with each repetition of the number, Javert felt the collar growing heavier around his neck, tight enough to start to chafe. _Spoiled_ , he scolded himself. What else could it be? All of his time spent as a slave was with men who called him by his name – some even deigning to use ‘Monsieur’ – and he had grown too used to it and forgotten the lawful way that he should be addressed.

He pushed the thought away, focusing on the current situation. His own collar did not matter; only Valjean’s did.

“I have known Jean Valjean for years,” he began. “I have seen him as a convict – I was, after all, the guard who wrote his parole itinerary – and as a Mayor – serving underneath Mayor Madeleine as his Police Inspector – as a convict I hunted and, later on, as his slave. My testimony will include all of the above instances.

“For most of the time I have known him, I saw Jean Valjean to be nothing more than a convict. He had been convicted by the Tribunal Correctionnel de Montdidier, and I was absolutely certain that a man who had been judged to be a convict was nothing but.” He paused for a moment, careful to not clench his hands. “That such a man could be nothing but.”

Raising his eyes, he met the judge’s, “Your honour,” then the audience’s, “ladies and gentlemen, I was wrong.”

He let out a breath. Even though he had prepared this speech, the words were still difficult to form by lips and tongue. His throat wished to rebel at every other syllable, for there was still a foolish part of him that was too prideful and would not wish the world to see the sheer gravity of the mistake he had made. But he forced it away, for his pride was nothing in comparison to Valjean’s freedom.

“You have heard from M. Pontmercy regarding Jean Valjean’s early circumstances. I will not repeat all of that. Neither could I, for that was the period of time which I did not know him. But I _can_ speak of prison. You can even consider me an expert witness on it, in fact.”

Finally giving in to to the urge to shove his hands into his pockets, Javert’s lips twisted. “I was born in Toulon, behind bars. When I grew, I became a guard. After my first trial, I went back to prison, and served as a proper prisoner. I have seen the place in every possible capacity, and so I say this with absolute certainty: no matter the quality of the man who steps into a prison, he will come out of it as a beast.

“In prison, a man has no name: he has but a number. Your honour, you addressed me by that number. M. Pontmercy is required by law to refer to me by it; when he demanded that I swear by my name, it was a kindness.” He paused, then shook his head.

“What has this to do with Jean Valjean? M. Pontmercy told you of his circumstances. For the crime of stealing a loaf of bread out of desperation to nourish a sick child, he was condemned to live as a beast, and amongst beasts. For there are no men in prison, your honour, ladies in gentlemen. There are only beasts: they are branded, herded with guns and batons to work then back into a small cage called a cell. They have no names. Even cattle have a better life than the condemned: they do not have the minds to understand that there is a meaning to having a name.”

His lips twisted further. “There are murderers in jail. Rapists. True beasts: the predators of society. Enter Jean Valjean; enter a thief. He was amongst them. He had to do his best to survive. He was branded and had his name taken away.” 

Javert’s shoulders shook a little, a bitter laugh escaping him. He did not understand then, but he did now; he understood it completely. “What man could not have given in to his rage about the unfairness of his situation? What man would not attempt to escape, especially when the law states that a man who stole a loaf of bread and a man who stole another’s life received the same punishment?”

Eyes scanning the room once more, he lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. “When he broke his parole, I was angry. I wanted to be the one to hunt him down. I tried my best, but for eight years he eluded me. Then I found him once more – a spectre of a convict found in the face of a just and virtuous Mayor.

“Yes, he was just. He was virtuous. M. Pontmercy and M. Tholomyés both spoke about the trial of Arras, but neither of them knew about the aftermath. M. Tholomyés’s witnesses – M. Bamatabois – told you that Jean Valjean destroyed his own house when he tried to escape. That is not a crime; it was his own property, under a false name though it might be. However…” he cocked his head towards the judge. “Only I know fully the reason why he tried to run.”

Drawing his hands out of his pockets, he spread out his arms. “He made a promise to a dying woman to take care of her child,” he said, lips quirking upwards. “M. Tholomyés, during his starting argument, spoke about kidnapping. That is false. A nun – Sister Simplice – gave me her testimony that she heard the dying woman – Fantine – entrust her child to Jean Valjean. She showed me letters. My report on it should still be in the police archives back in Montreuil-sur-Mer.

“He did not mean to escape, you know,” he continued, letting his hands drop back to his sides. “He asked me for three days. Three days so he could rescue a child from terrible circumstances. I did not believe him. He knocked me out. When I woke up again, I chased him. He had to run from me, he had to keep running, because I did not give him the three days he needed to entrust the child to someone else.”

Javert took a deep breath. The next words hurt his throat to say, but it was a pain he must endure: “If you lay the blame on Jean Valjean resisting arrest upon anyone, your honour, ladies and gentlemen, it must be on me. I was blind; I did not see. Even after I heard from a nun – a woman of great virtue – that the child Valjean pleaded to me about truly existed, even after I examined the letters sent to Fantine and knew the child’s circumstances were terrible, I still did not believe him. Even after I went to the place the child was and heard even more testimonies about her circumstances, I still did not believe.

“Because I saw only a convict, and refused to admit that he could be a good man. An _honourable_ man who made a promise and was simply attempting to go through with it.”

“None of this absolves Jean Valjean of his multiple charges of fraud,” Tholomyés pointed out, his voice oily and smug.

Biting back a snarl, Javert nodded. “I am getting to that, Monsieur,” he said, taking care to keep his voice blank. _Imagine delivering a report_ , Cosette had said. He held onto those words. He did not look at Valjean.

“What is the difference between a slave and a paroled convict?” he asked, eyes once more turning to the judge. “Nothing, your honour, ladies and gentlemen. Nothing, except that a slave’s collar is visible. We are both dependent on the charity of others, and that is a terrible thing to rely upon. Charity and mercy are both difficult to come by.”

His hands twitched at his sides. He resisted the urge to drag a hand through his hair, swallowing down the words about Valjean’s mercy and charity. This was a court of appeal, and he must focus on the circumstances. It mattered little to the Cour de Cassation about the character of a man, and both Javert and Pontmercy had lingered too long upon that already.

So he took a deep breath, and began again. “M. Pontmercy has told all of you about what Jean Valjean has done as Mayor Madeleine. Let me tell you of a fact: he could not have done what he had – opened a factory that offered employment, built schools and a hospital to serve the need of the people of the town – under his own name. A paroled convict who arrived with money would be suspected of theft immediately, especially one convicted _of_ theft. Even if he was cleared of charges, he would not be trusted; none would work in his factory. The prosperity Montreuil enjoyed, the education given and lives saved, would not have existed if not for Jean Valjean’s crime of fraud.”

Tholomyés was making to speak again, and Javert forced more words out of his throat even quicker to stop him. “Not only that, but afterwards: he _had_ to resist arrest, for there was no one else who would be willing to travel that far for a child they did not know, much less take her in and raise her like any child deserves. Later on, he _had_ to commit fraud once more, for who would take care of that child if he was jailed once more? No one was willing; even if they would, he could not find such people while I was still hunting him.”

“You keep speaking of this _child_ ,” Tholomyés drawled. “Does she truly exist?”

Javert bit back a laugh. He jerked his head towards the audience’s stands instead, catching Cosette’s eye. She nodded towards him, and stood. “She is standing right there, Monsieur,” he said. “M. Pontmercy would call her to the stands to testify for the prosecution as well, but this _is_ an appeals court.”

He could not help the small note of mockery in his tone: Tholomyés had been focused on the argument about Valjean’s character as much as, or even more, than Pontmercy had been.

All eyes had turned towards Cosette. She gave the judge a small smile, curtseying slightly, before sitting back down.

“I come here,” Javert continued, drawing the attention of the courtroom back to himself, “to argue that the law is unjust. The need for the existence of this very trial is unjust. For Jean Valjean has been repeatedly forced to commit unlawful acts for purposes that were just and virtuous. He is not a habitual criminal; he is a good man forced into criminality due to his circumstances.”

He took another breath, and met the eyes of Monsieur le Président head-on. “The law has made him a criminal, and that is unjust.”

“You’re advocating the destruction of the law?” Tholomyes blurted out, sounding incredulous. “You’re advocating anarchy!”

Javert shook his head. He tapped his own collar, the sound of nail against metal reverberating through the large room. “If I am, I would not have just accepted the judgment Monsieur le Président has given me. No, your honour, ladies and gentlemen. I'm advocating justice. I'm advocating humanity.”

His lips curled into a wry, bitter smile. “If the law could look upon _my_ case justly, then why not Jean Valjean’s?”

Tholomyés opened his mouth, but Pontmercy stepped forward before he could speak: the first question he had for his chosen witness.

“87452,” he started, then shook his head. “M. Javert. Jean Valjean was your Master. Could he not have ordered you to have said all this in the possibility that you would have to testify in his trial?”

 _Valjean would do no such thing_ , Javert thought. _He would not, because I had to convince him to allow this trial to happen in the first place_.

Swallowing, he shook his head. “Jean Valjean is not my Master,” he said wryly instead. “In the eyes of the law, he never was, for it was Ultime Fauchelevent who was, and that man did not exist. Any orders he could have made were considered null and void at the moment of the transfer.”

“You said that you used to look at Jean Valjean as only a convict,” Pontmercy said. When Javert nodded, he continued, voice growing softer:

“What changed your mind?”

Javert smiled mirthlessly. _At the barricades_ , he thought, but he could not mention that without dooming the entire case. Still, he must speak the truth, and so he would:

“When I became his slave,” he said haltingly. “Here I was, the policeman who had hunted him all of his life, who practically held the chains of prison above his head, at his mercy. Surely any convict would have taken this chance to do to me what the guards had done; what the law allowed him to do: to treat me as something less than human.

“But instead, he ordered me to call him by his name. He gave me permission to wear clothes beyond the standard orange jumpsuit. He looked upon me like a man.” Javert’s lips twisted, for surely this was irony: “He allowed the appeal to go through such that I had a chance for freedom; the very chance I had denied him all of his life.”

He shoved his hands once more into his pockets, lifting his head to look Monsieur le Président in the eye. “A wise man once told me that a man should not only be judged by his thoughts and actions, but also circumstances, their thoughts, and their hearts.” Javert paused.

“The law is made by men. If the law does not do so, if the courts do not do so, then we are already treating men like beasts even before they enter prison.”

Clenching his hands in his pockets, he ducked his head. He said, awkwardly, “I have finished my testimony.”

The judge banged his gavel. “Dismissed, 87452.”

Nodding, Javert walked away from the centre of the court and back to the audience’s bench.

“Prosecution, do you have any further witnesses?”

Out of the corner of his eyes – his gaze was still fixed upon the polished wooden floors of the courtroom with each step he took – Javert saw Pontmercy shake his head. “No, your honour.”

“Sum up your cases then.”

As Tholomyés began to speak, Javert finally allowed his eyes to turn towards Valjean.  
Valjean was staring at him, his eyes wide and so, so very dark. His hands were clenched tight over the banister of the accused’s benches, and he was biting his lip.

Javert tried for a smile, hoping to reassure, but it came out as a weak thing. He gave into the urge to drag his hand through his hair.

Slowly, Valjean’s grip on the wooden banister loosened. He leaned backwards, breathing out heavily. Distantly, Javert heard Tholomyés’s footsteps as he finished his summation, and Pontmercy step forward.

But his attention was entirely fixed upon Valjean. He watched as those dark eyes start to turn upwards. The smile was cautious and carefully masked – a necessity in this courtroom full of eyes – but Javert found his breathing easing up anyway. It was not enough to make Valjean smile, not in this instance, but…

It meant almost too much to him that Valjean _did_. If only because it meant that he could distract him, if only for a moment, from the surely painful arguments about his life.

 _You’re a good man_ , he thought, trying to convey it to Valjean through his eyes alone. _You deserve to be freed._

When Valjean nodded towards him, Javert closed his eyes and slumped onto his seat. He barely noticed Cosette and Azelma’s hands on his arm, so focused was he by the tide of relief that had washed over him.

Surely, _surely_ , if he could manage to convince Valjean – the most stubborn man he knew – then the judge himself could not think otherwise.

“Court adjourned. We will reconvene in seven days.”

The days stretched out almost endlessly ahead of him. Javert tried to force patience into himself: if Valjean had waited decades for freedom, then… then Javert could be patient for seven days. He could hold onto this hope for seven days more.

He would be able to have Valjean back into his arms and call him by his true name in front of all eyes then. He _would_.

They all would.

***

“What we still can’t figure out,” Pontmercy said haltingly, dragging a hand through his hair, “is how Tholomyés managed to find the people in Montreuil-sur-Mer so quickly and convinced all of them to come.”

They – Cosette, Pontmercy, and Javert himself – were in the interrogation room that had served as Valjean’s makeshift cell in the Palais for the past two weeks or so. There was a pile of neatly-folded blankets in a corner that served as Valjean’s bed, and a slightly higher stack of books on the table that Cosette and Frey had brought for him – Javert didn’t know much of his reading habits. Right beside the bed was a bag stuffed full of clothes, some of which still had to be washed.

But it was still bare; still a cell. Valjean was treated better than most prisoners under trial by virtue of M. Chabouillet’s favour, but he still could not leave the Palais. He even had to be escorted out of the interrogation room by an officer whenever he needed to use the washroom or the showers. Verdier had volunteered for the task – part of the ‘favour’ he insisted he owed Javert for helping him with his cases – but though the officer was willing, the prisoner was still stripped of dignity.

 _Seven more days_ , he tried to remind himself, dragging his mind away from the interrogation room. But his mind seemed fixated once more on the law, and he found himself thinking of the courtroom instead.

Frey and Azelma had come with them, but the latter had left to pick up her brothers from school, and the former needed to start preparing for his lessons. He had taken over Valjean’s students despite his avowed lack of knowledge of literature because he absolutely refused to even ask anyone else. 

“It’ll only be temporary,” he had said. “You’ll come back to us soon, Monsieur.”

Rubbing a hand over his face, he forced himself to stop thinking about the future. Seven days would not pass faster if he kept on lingering on these thoughts. The hours would not grow lesser by will alone.

“Bamatabois, Mme. Victurnien, and your old foreman at the factory, Fournier,” he said, shaking his head. “Three of those who would be the most willing to speak out against you, and in only a day or two.”

“He’s not a stupid man,” Cosette said. She sighed, pulling off her glasses and staring at them for a moment. “Even though I’d love it if he were so that Papa has more of a chance, he isn’t.”

“Tholomyés is desperate,” Javert added grimly. “It’s not just Valjean’s fate that hangs in balance with this case.”

“But I don’t think he’ll win it,” Pontmercy said suddenly. He blushed and ducked his head when all three pairs of eyes in the room turned towards him. “It’s not that I think I spoke better or anything like that, but… his argument was too much geared towards trying to slander M. Jean’s character, and that’s not what the appeals court is for.”

Javert opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Valjean finally broke his silence.

“I hate this,” he said, voice low and tight. “I hate the courts. It is… it is not _right_ for justice to be decided upon the arguments two men choose to give. It is not right for it to be decided by one man.”

Trust Valjean to voice out precisely what had been bothering Javert himself. His lips thinned even further, and he dragged a hand through his hair even as Cosette reached over and embraced her father.

“Maybe it’s not right for things to be this way, Papa, but surely… surely it’s a good thing, because the way the courts are will serve us well this time.”

Valjean shook his head mutely. He seemed to be at a loss of words.

Javert sighed. “What Valjean means is that, to him, being freed because of the opinion of one man and the skills of two other is…” he faltered for a moment before pressing on. “Justice served through unjust means cannot be justice at all.” 

“But we can’t change the courts,” Cosette replied immediately. She hugged her father harder. “Isn’t it just to use the very instrument of injustice to dole out what is righteous?”

“Azelma told me something that M. Frey said,” Pontmercy broke in, his voice hesitant. “There used to be more than one judge before the civil wars, but then so many people died and things were so chaotic that cases needed to be solved quickly, and that’s the reason for our current system.”

He rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. “You’re right, Monsieur,” he glanced at Javert. “It’s not just. But isn’t Cosette right as well? Making use of these unjust courts in order to give M. Jean the justice he deserves… isn’t that doing what is right?”

“But it is _not right_ ,” Valjean burst out. He gave an apologetic look to Cosette when she started at the volume of his voice, placing a kiss in her hair before turning back to Pontmercy.

“Marius, please don’t get me wrong: I am very thankful that you have decided to take up this burden.” He held up a hand to forestall Pontmercy before he could speak, surely to deny that fighting for Valjean’s sake was a burden at all. 

“I’m not sitting in the accused’s stand for my own sake. I did not confess for my own freedom. I _cannot_. That will be too…” he shook his head hard.

“Selfish,” Javert finished for him, unable to help the wryness in his tone.

Valjean shot him a warning look that was too fond to be effective, and Javert shrugged.

“What I’m doing all this for is all those who have been treated unfairly,” Valjean continued. “This… all of this… it is _not fair_. I should be in a jail cell and not in this large room. I should be treated like any other convict. I should not even have Monsieur le Président presiding over my case, because surely he would not wish to look over every single other case that will come after mine if… _if_ mine is won. I should be treated like any other convict if there is justice to be done.”

Only Valjean, Javert thought, helplessly fond. _Only Valjean_ would rage about the good treatment he received; the treatment he deserved for the man he was.

“Papa,” Cosette said, sounding endlessly frustrated. “Why are you complaining about being treated like a man instead of an animal?”

“I am not _complaining_!” Valjean protested.

No longer able to help himself, Javert burst out laughing. When Valjean turned sharp eyes towards him, he shook his head hard, flapping his hands in the air.

After a moment, he regained control of himself. “Think about it as charity,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even. “Mercy, even. You might not want it, but it’s what you need. It’s what you deserve.”

“I don’t deserve this.” Valjean swept his hand out, indicating the room and, Javert suspected, the people within it as well.

“You deserve this and so much more,” Pontmercy said before Javert could. “M. Jean, _please_. You have said so many times that you give aid to those who need it because it’s what they deserve. Why is it so different for yourself?”

Valjean faltered. He sunk back into his hard metal chair, rubbing his face. “It’s not the same,” he said weakly. “I am… they are… it’s not the same.”

“That’s your opinion,” Javert said, fighting down another chuckle. “Wasn’t it you who said that the opinion of the one receiving mercy does not matter, and only the one who wishes to give it does, as long as it is truly mercy instead of misguided kindness?”

“That’s not…” Valjean glared at him from behind the hand still clapped over his face. “Don’t twist my words, Javert.”

“He’s not,” Cosette pointed out. She pulled a little back from her father, tilting his head to face her before she rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard you say the same so many times.”

Leaning in, she pecked him on the cheek. Her smile softened, turning more affectionate than frustrated. “Stop being a hypocrite, Papa,” she scolded.

A few words from his daughter seemed to do what a thousand from Javert could not, because Valjean sagged immediately, all fight going out of him. He looked from Cosette to Pontmercy then to Javert, swallowing hard.

“I don’t know how to thank you all,” he said, voice choked. “All of you.”

“It’s what you deserve,” Javert said simply.

“M. Jean,” Pontmercy said. He hesitated before standing, walking over to Valjean before he perched on the table, taking Valjean’s hands into his own. His eyes were terribly earnest.

“You have saved us all,” he said quietly. “Not by your own admission, but by those you have saved. You saved Cosette from a terrible life, myself from death, Mademoiselle Azelma from starvation. M. Frey said that you saved him from a life of helpless rage, though I did not know what he meant. Even M. Chabouillet said that you saved him from a wasted life.”

His smile was tremulous, and he gripped Valjean’s hands tighter. Cosette kissed her father on the cheek again, gently wiping away the tear that slipped down.

“Is it truly so difficult to believe that we would want to return the favour?”

“I…” Valjean swallowed. “I did not do any of that for the sake of having favours returned.”

“And that is why we want to do this,” Pontmercy returned, his voice as firm as it had been in court. All traces of the uncertain boy were gone now, and in his place stood a man with bright, fierce eyes as he gazed upon the one who gave him a cause to believe in.

“We love you, M. Jean. Not merely for what you have done, but for all that you are. All that we give you, we give freely, for it is merely the least of what we think you deserve.”

 _A revolution_ , M. Chabouillet had said. If Valjean won, there would be a revolution. Javert was suddenly struck by the urge to laugh, for surely… surely if such a thing happened…

It would be for the sake of one man. It would be for the sake of Jean Valjean. And perhaps Javert was blind still; perhaps he was terribly biased, but…

He could not think of anyone who was more deserving of such a thing. Valjean might not wish for it, but all that he had done, all that he had suffered, all that he was… yes, a revolution for his sake was what he deserved.

Valjean’s head had bowed. His hands, still caught in Pontmercy’s, clenched and unclenched helplessly. Cosette wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him in to lean upon her, and she kissed his temple gently.

“Papa,” she said, voice a little muffled. “It hurts me to even think that you still think of yourself undeserving of good things. It hurts me to think that you still think of yourself as a bad man. It hurts me, Papa, because you are…”

She pulled away a little, rubbing her eyes. “You’re the man best man I’ve ever known. The best father any child can ever ask for.”

Valjean stilled. Slowly, ever so slowly, he took Cosette’s glasses from her hand. He gently replaced them on the bridge of her nose before he bopped the tip of it with the tip of his finger. His daughter giggled, grabbing his hand and pressing it to her cheek.

“My Cosette,” he said, hoarsely. “My sweet Cosette.”

Looking upon the scene, Javert smiled. He tried to move his chair quietly so he could slip out of the room and leave the three of them alone, but there was the softest scrape of metal on concrete. They turned towards him.

“Don’t leave, Javert,” Valjean said. “Stay.”

Javert shook his head. “I’ll come back later,” he said. “I promise.”

Valjean nodded. Cosette and Pontmercy both did not say a word, their eyes shifting between the two of them, and Javert nodded once more before he left the room with his hands shoved into his pockets.

 _Selfish bastard_ , he scolded himself, leaning on the closed door. Of all the things to find himself jealous about, it was Cosette and Pontmercy’s relationship with Valjean. It was how Valjean would listen to _them_ when Javert’s own words never seemed to sink in.

He knew that Valjean formed the entirety of his world while he was only a part – perhaps a small one – of Valjean’s. He knew that and thought himself fine with it, for Valjean deserved so much more than a broken creature like himself. But his chest ached nonetheless, the green heart within crying out in pain that made it difficult for him to breathe.

Javert’s shoulders shook for a moment, but he swallowed down the bitter laughter before it could be given voice. No, Valjean deserved more than a man like him. He was a good man, practically a saint, while Javert himself was still a sinner. A gluttonous thing, trying to gorge himself on all that Valjean had given him while wanting more and more.

 _Look at you_ , a voice spoke in his mind. Javert closed his eyes – it was familiar, this cold thing. He had not heard it in weeks, but he was unsurprised that it chose now to return. At least the spectre had not appeared in front of him: the half-headless thing with Valjean’s brand on his chest. He did not think he could take it at this moment.

 _You’re despicable_.

What else could he be, after all? What _could_ he give Valjean? Without the collar, all he had given him were those years of fear and pain and suffering. With it… All that Valjean had at the moment, even the freedom near enough to grasp, was due to the efforts of others. Javert had given him nothing but the broken-shattered pieces of himself for Valjean to heal. Wasn’t that horrible selfishness?

He did not know how long he stood there in the thick silence. The hallway was deserted and the door and walls were thick enough to shut out the voices from within the room. Javert somehow managed to remain standing, his hands clenched tight within his pockets, eyes burning with tears he refused to let fall.

Perhaps he should be used to his own inadequacies by now. But he wasn’t. It was terribly difficult to, after a lifetime of deluding himself about his own irreproachability.

When the door opened, Javert nearly fell backwards. He straightened himself, head ducked low as he blinked rapidly. Lifting his eyes, he met Cosette’s. Her face was still streaked with tears, but she gave him a shaky smile.

“Marius and I have to go back,” she said. Her hand, Javert noted distantly, was clasped tight in her fiancé’s. “M. Gillenormand is waiting for news.”

“And Grandfather doesn’t take very well to waiting for long,” Pontmercy added. He blinked as he met Javert’s gaze, mouth opening for a moment before Cosette tugged on him hard. Stumbling, he followed her as she headed down the hallway.

“Papa’s waiting for you inside, Monsieur,” Cosette called. 

Javert stared after them. His head was a mess, and he was sure his face was as well. The door was not fully closed – still ajar – and he was reaching out hesitantly for the knob before it yanked open.

He was dragged into the room by the wrist. The slam of the heavy door and the click of the lock rang in his head even as he found himself pushed against the wood. There were callused hands on his jaw, and Javert heard himself gasp as he was kissed hard and desperate, Valjean’s body pressing against him.

It was by pure instinct that he responded: arms wrapping around Valjean’s chest, mouth opening as he breathed in Valjean’s exhale and let the warmth of his breath sink into his lungs. He was shaking again before he even realised it, clinging onto Valjean as if he was the one anchor in the world as their lips met again and again.

“Cameras,” he tried to say.

“M. Verdier said that he shut them off,” Valjean murmured. “There was no point, he said.”

At _that,_ Javert tensed. He would step back but his way was blocked by the door. Somehow, Valjean managed to recognise what it was he wanted, and Javert found his body chilled once more when Valjean pulled away from him.

The hands on his face stroked over his cheeks. “Javert?” Valjean asked. “What’s wrong?”

Javert couldn’t speak. His eyes fell shut and he let out an exhale that twisted in his throat, his hands clawed at Valjean’s shoulders and biceps. He couldn’t let go even if he wanted to, his body moving on its own accord, and he held onto Valjean tight, falling forward until their foreheads met.

“Is it… did you have those flashbacks again?” Valjean sounded worried. His hand rested on the back of Javert’s neck, thumb slipping beneath the collar to rub against a spot right above his spine. “Was it the nightmares?”

 _Fool_ , the voice said, the chill of it sinking straight into his bones. He shivered again.

“Nothing,” he somehow managed to say. “It’s… it’s nothing.”

“Bullshit,” Valjean hissed. The shock of hearing him swear was nearly enough to make Javert laugh even as he found himself being dragged forward, Valjean’s hand strong on his elbow. He stumbled over his own feet, dropping down onto a chair just as his legs gave in.

“Focus on me,” Valjean was saying, his arms warm around Javert’s chest. “Breathe slowly, and focus on me.”

Javert swallowed. He tried to shake his head, tried to tell Valjean he was fine and that it was ridiculous that he was worrying about _him_ , but no words could come. He could only hold on tightly as he tried to breathe.

 _Look at you_ , the voice said again. Out of the corner of his eyes, Javert caught a flash of bricks, of dripping blood, and he swallowed hard. A strangled sound escaped him, entirely wordless.

Valjean’s hand had somehow pulled up his shirt, splaying over his ribs. The bandages were already gone, and the warmth of his skin sunk straight into Javert’s bones, chasing away the chill. And Javert shook helplessly in his arms, trying to regain control over himself, not even understanding his own body – much less his own mind – at the moment.

“I’m sorry,” he heard himself say, his voice echoing strangely in his own ears as if passing through thick waters. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come to visit you before this because I didn’t… I couldn’t bear…”

“Shhh,” Valjean shushed him, lips brushing over Javert’s. “I understand. I could see you, and that was enough.”

“No,” Javert shook his head again. “I couldn’t… if I could see you and you were near enough to touch but I could not touch you… If I compromised your case because of… because of…” He choked back a sound that was nearly a sob.

He was a fool. He knew Verdier was the one who volunteered to be in charge; he could have simply _asked_. 

“It’s alright,” Valjean murmured. His lips brushed Javert’s ear, then over his hairline. “I knew. That’s why I never asked.”

 _All you’ve given to him is another burden_.

Javert gritted his teeth hard as he shook hard from the onslaught of cold. Sweat broke out all over his body. The chair creaked as Valjean dragged him to the floor and kicked it away, and Javert felt his throat scream as another wordless sound escaped him as Valjean pulled him even closer. He felt that broad chest against his back, Valjean’s arm around his waist, hands still pressed against his heart. The other hand was curling around his own, their fingers tangling, and Valjean pressed kisses to his jaw.

“Pontmercy, he- he didn’t say what you saved me from,” Javert heard himself say. Where the words came from, he didn’t know. His mind was empty. “You saved me from myself and that is a great feat, but I don’t know…”

He bit hard on the inside of his cheek, tasting blood. “I don’t know what I can save you from, Valjean. I don’t even know what I can _give you_. It’s not… it’s not _fair_.”

Valjean stilled completely. His hand gripped tighter around Javert’s, and those lips pressed harder against Javert’s temple.

“Is that…” he trailed off. “Javert. Oh, _Javert_.”

There was such thick sorrow in his voice that Javert found himself biting even harder on the wound on the inside of his cheek. His free hand was reaching up towards his neck. _Lead him to joy_ , Fantine had said, but all Javert did… all he could bring him was…

“I’m sorry,” he said again, feeling helplessly inadequate. “I’m _sorry_.”

“Shhh,” Valjean repeated. His hand shifted from Javert’s ribs to grab hold of his hand before he could reach for his throat. Joined like that, he returned to pressing it over Javert’s heart.

“You’re a fool,” Valjean said, and he sounded immeasurably fond. “You… you have no idea what you’ve given me, do you?”

Javert shook his head. “Pain,” he said, feeling more than hearing the dull hollowness of his own voice. “Suffering. Sorrow. Only that.”

Valjean’s hands tightened around his, and Javert felt his beard scrape over his jaw. “If there is pain and suffering and sorrow,” Valjean said slowly. “They are all _for_ you, instead of _because_ of you.”

“I don’t understand,” he said helplessly.

“Once I told you that you gave me back my daughter and my son,” Valjean said, his voice soft and warm against Javert’s ear. “And that is true, Javert. If not for you, if you had not appeared again, I would have left them. I planned to die alone in the convent, you know, because… well, what if I was arrested again? I would’ve tainted their happiness with my past.”

“No,” Javert shook his head. He wanted to say that he was willing to kill himself rather than arrest Valjean, but his throat refused to form any more words.

“I know that now,” Valjean said. “I know I would have tainted their happiness if I’d left them, because of their love for me. I know, Javert. I know because of _you_.”

Javert stopped breathing. Valjean turned his head, pressing a kiss right at the juncture between jaw and throat, above the collar, and Javert felt warm air rush once more into his lungs.

“You made me believe that I deserve to be loved,” Valjean continued, his voice still soft and so, so very warm.

“ _How_?” The word wrenched out of him, the pain spreading down to his chest, to the very core of himself.

Valjean kissed him on the edge of his mouth. Javert turned towards him helplessly, iron in the presence of lodestone, and Valjean kissed him fully.

“You gave me yourself,” Valjean said quietly. “Freely and willingly.”

“But,” Javert blurted. “But I’m…” his shoulders shook, and a terribly dark laugh escaped him. “But I’m like _this_.”

“Yes, you’re hurt,” Valjean said. He raised their still-joined hands, stroking over Javert’s ribs, over his heart where it ached the most. “Your wounds here are terrible. But you have entrusted to _me_ to heal them. You trusted me to heal them and you have healed. And perhaps I am selfish, Javert, but as I watched you heal, as I watched your pride return to your eyes… I found myself healing as well.

“The wounds I have carried for so long… they have scabbed over.” His lips brushed Javert’s mouth once more. “You’ve saved me, Javert. You saved me long ago before you even realised it.”

Javert shuddered hard. He wrenched himself from Valjean’s grip – just a moment, the chill brushing his skin – before he turned around and clasped his face with both hands. Their mouths crashed together, and this kiss was even more desperate than the last, their hands reaching out for each other and touching every inch of skin they could touch.

“Valjean,” he said helplessly. “ _Valjean_.”

Fingers brushed over his mouth. Javert gripped tightly onto that hand, turning it blindly to kiss the shackle-scars there, the too-smooth skin that spoke of years of pain and suffering.

“It’s these things you do,” Valjean said. His other hand cupped Javert’s jaw. “You looked at me and called me by my true name, the name I have not heard from another’s lips in years. You kiss my scars. You see all that I am, Javert, and still you give yourself to me.”

“How could I not?” Javert asked. Finally, he opened his eyes, and saw through a blurry world that there were tears in Valjean’s as well. “How could I not, when you are…” 

Words failed him then; he had too many, and they were all too inadequate.

Kissing him, Valjean smiled. It was shaky but true, and his eyes shone with greater brilliance than even the stars. “I said that you gave me faith, hope and love,” he said. “I did not lie.”

His hand splayed once more above Javert’s heart. “You gave me faith in myself. You gave me hope in the future.” He leaned in, their foreheads touching as Javert kissed his fingers shakily. “You gave me love, so much of it. An ocean’s worth that washed over me, chasing away the chill that had settled in me over so long.”

Before Javert could speak, a finger was over his lips. Valjean’s smile widened. “The chill you did _not_ cause,” he said firmly.

If to love this man was a sin, Javert thought helplessly, he would gladly bear an eternity of hellfire. It would be worthwhile for the sake of having Valjean in his arms, to see him smile with such warmth towards him.

He kissed Valjean again, shaky and trembling. His hand stroked over Valjean’s back, tracing the scars he could feel, some of which he surely placed there himself. Perhaps he could not heal them, perhaps he could not erase the scars, but… his hand moved towards Valjean’s chest, feeling the strong, steady beats of his heart.

Here. If Javert could heal the wounds here, then… he would bear an eternity of hellfire if that was the one deed he could accomplish in this world.

Valjean’s fingers brushed over his cheek, wiping away some of the tears that had fallen. Javert turned his head, kissing the rough palm, and Valjean’s smile steadied as his thumb slid over Javert’s lips.

“Better?” he asked.

Javert nodded. The voice was gone. He did not know when it would return, but he was now surrounded by warmth and the chill was nowhere to be found. It was enough; more than enough. It was more than he deserved, perhaps, but he was a selfish enough man to take what Valjean freely gave.

His breath shuddered out of his throat as he pressed his forehead to Valjean’s again. The hand over his mouth moved to his neck before burying itself in his hair, and Javert sighed deeply, tilting his head towards it just slightly.

“If we are both selfish men,” he said quietly, “if we both take what we think we do not deserve, then perhaps what we give each other is enough to make up for it.”

Valjean gave a startled laugh, his breath curling warm over Javert’s jaw. “Mm,” he said. “Perhaps it is.”

They stayed like that for long moments, simply leaning against each other. Time slipped away from them; the world outside of this enclosed room stood still. None of it matter to Javert for now.

“Do you have to leave?” Valjean asked eventually.

“Yes,” Javert said, a little regretfully. He had to return to Frey’s apartment at some point, even though he would dearly loved to stay here until these seven days had passed.

“I wish I can free you from this,” Valjean said, his hand spreading out of the collar.

Javert laughed quietly. He took Valjean’s hand, pulling it away from the metal that closed around his throat. Meeting those dark eyes, he kissed the knuckles gently.

“From the moment you ordered me to call you by your name,” he said gently, “you already have.”

Before Valjean could speak, he shook his head. “From the moment you cut away my bonds at the barricades,” he continued, voice dropping even lower. “You have already set me free in more ways than you can imagine, Valjean.”

Perhaps Javert had not recognised it as freedom then. He had seen two paths, both equally righteous, and had been lost. But loss and freedom were the same to a slave who had been willingly chained for so long, and now the two paths had turned back into one, and it led towards Valjean.

“In seven days, you will be too,” he finished. Perhaps he should not give false hope, for there was surely still a chance that Valjean would not be given the justice he deserved; but there had been too many hidden truths within this day for him to hold onto another.

Valjean looked at him for a long moment before he nodded. He leaned in to kiss Javert again, the kiss sweet and slow.

“When you say it,” Valjean said quietly. “I can believe it.”

He smiled, crooked at the edges. “Faith and hope, Javert. Do you still not believe that’s what you’ve given me?”

Javert closed his eyes. “It will take a few more repetitions,” he said, trying to keep his voice light.

“Then I’ll repeat it for as long as you need me to,” Valjean said decisively. “Until you believe.”

“And I’ll tell you that you are a good man,” Javert returned, just as firm. “Until you believe.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Valjean’s lips quirked up a little more, a laugh bubbling out from his throat. And Javert chuckled helplessly in turn, lips meeting Valjean’s as he swallowed out the sound of that laughter that _he_ elicited.

“Yes,” Valjean said. “Yes, we will.”

For the rest of their lifetimes, Javert knew. Even if Valjean had to go back to prison, Javert would follow. No matter where he went, Javert would follow.

No longer as hunter and prey; no longer as captive and trapper. But freely and willingly, walking side by side.

The thought had him kissing Valjean again, letting his sweetness fill his mouth and lungs. He held onto it, held onto this warmth.

At the very least, it would last him for seven days until he could have Valjean in his arms again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am _never_ going to write about the law again. The past two chapters were like pulling teeth. I just want to write Valjean getting the ending he deserves, dammit. Why is it _so_ _hard_?
> 
> Also, yes, Javert’s trauma from Book I still isn’t resolved entirely. PTSD doesn’t go away like that. He’s just had… distractions. I’m amazed he lasted this long without another panic attack with everything that happened in both Books II and III.
> 
> PS: This has broken the record for the longest chapter so far. I have given up entirely on keeping my chapters at around the range of 5k. I have no control over these characters. I have no control over my wordcount. I have no control over this fic.
> 
> But at least it’s nearly over.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert witnesses justice done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> **Book III Chapter Twelve: Unjust Laws**  
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Fears of homophobia, but mostly nothing.

The day before Valjean’s judgment day had found Javert in the interrogation room once more, kneeling as Valjean sat on the metal chair beside him. Valjean who watched, silent, as Javert mouthed words of prayer for him, his fingers moving steadily through the rosary beads.

But Valjean was a wiser man than Javert himself: after two hours of constant watching, he stood from his chair, kneeling beside Javert. He did not speak, but simply wrapped his fingers around Javert’s, moving through the beads together as they leaned against each other.

Perhaps it was sacrilegious for the one praying and the one prayed for to touch this way. But Javert found the words coming easier and stronger to his mouth nonetheless when he had Valjean’s warmth close to his skin; when the solidity of his form helped to bracket and contain the multitudes of formless emotions in his chest.

When the clock showed that night had fully fallen, they had kissed, long and sweet.

 _“_ Faith and hope,” Javert murmured, his hand resting over the brand on Valjean’s chest.

“And love,” Valjean finished, fingers slipping beneath the collar to slide across Javert’s neck. __  
  
Then Javert left the room and the Palais, heading for Frey’s apartment once more.

That night, he once more could not sleep. There was too much anxiety within him, and not even the lingering traces of Valjean’s warmth could eradicate the chill he felt at the very edges of his mind. There was still the possibility of failure; of Javert’s testimony having changed the judge’s opinion of Valjean for the worse.

 _Let him be free_ , he prayed fervently. _Lord, I am a selfish man. Take the revolution after if it is not in your plans, but please, let him be free_.

He stayed kneeling on the floor with his elbows on the bed, head resting on cold glass beads in his unmoving fingers. The rituals were lost to him now, washed away by the rushing tides of his single, zealous wish.

When the knock came, soft and tentative, Javert knew the time had come. He took a deep breath, unfolding himself to stand. His legs were a little weak from staying in the same position for hours though the shattered bone was almost fully healed by now, and he used the wall as a crutch as he opened the door.

Frey stood outside, hands shoved into his pockets. His eyes darted towards the rosary in Javert’s hand before he smiled, a little crooked.

“So you didn’t sleep either,” he said.

Javert shook his head. After a moment, unable to help his curiosity when it came to this man, he asked:

“What have you been doing the whole night?” He hadn’t heard a sound.

“Reading,” Frey said. “Making speeches. Possible contingency plans.” The smile curved upwards further, and he shrugged.

“My own way of praying, I suppose.”

He already knew that Frey had no belief in God. It was difficult not to when Frey had always glanced at the rosary with eyes that were old and tired and resigned.

“I don’t know how you can believe,” Frey said, finally asking the question that Javert knew had been hovering in his mind through the past weeks.

His own mouth quirked upwards. The answer he gave came to him easily – it was the same one he gave to junior officers who held rosaries in hands shaking from all that they had seen.

“Faith is a choice every person must make for themselves.” Perhaps the _only_ unvarnished choice they had in this broken, shadowed world of theirs. “Whether one does or not is no business of anyone but their own.”

“I would’ve thought you to believe that everyone must believe, or they would be punished,” Frey said wryly. “Probably by being sent to Hell.”

“If Hell is real, then they would be,” he shrugged. “But what is the point of forcing the choice? It is not men who will enforce the punishment. The law judges not belief, but the actions that come from the belief or lack of it.”

He paused, and his own smile turned wry as well as he gave Frey a sideway glance. “Besides, a man who believes due to fears of Hell awaiting him is far more dishonest than a man who simply admits that he does not.”

“Pascal’s Wager,” Frey murmured under his breath.

“What?”

“Just a thought,” he said, smile broadening in a patently false grin. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I dislike,” Javert said slowly, “dishonest men.”

Frey threw his head back and laughed. “It’s not dishonesty. Merely something that I don’t think you’ll be interested in it.” 

“Let me be the judge of that.”

When he laughed again, the sound was cold and bitter, a hoarse rasp in his throat. “Once there was a man named Blaise Pascal. He came up with a series of theorems that can be summed up in _precisely_ what you have just said.”

Before Javert could say that Frey was right – he had no interest in the words of long-dead men – Frey continued. “Grandfather buried the wheel and forced his people to reinvent it in darkness, over and over again.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I wonder why.”

“I’m not a historian or a politician,” Javert said, almost cautiously.

“Then tell me what a police officer would think.”

Sighing, Javert tipped his head up. “Why would a criminal store and hide something that everyone wants?” he asked, almost rhetorically. “So he can create a black market. So he can control the prices.” 

He slanted his eyes towards Frey. “That’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?”

Frey grinned widely. “Oh, but it is, somewhat,” he said. “Or rather, you just told me something I already knew, and, in doing so, you helped me accomplish what I set out to do.”

Javert stared at him. “What?”

“It’s only two hours to the trial now,” Frey said, grin widening even further. “If we start getting ready now, then we’ll reach there just in time. I’ve made you waste the last fifteen minutes that you needed to.”

He stood there in front of Javert with his hands shoved into his pockets and his shoulders hunched upwards, face tucked down slightly until his chin brushed his chest. At the moment, he resembled nothing more than a young boy who was terribly pleased with himself for getting precisely what he wanted.

Which was, Javert realised, not untrue. His eyebrow twitched slightly, and he reached out with one hand, dropping it heavily onto Frey’s head.

Before the boy could even react, Javert grabbed his neck with his other arm, dragging him into a headlock. He scrubbed hard at the dirty-blonde hair underneath his hand, growling.

“You _little shit_.”

When Frey started to laugh and struggle, Javert rolled his eyes in an effort to hide the warmth in his chest. The effort was clumsy, awkward, and more ridiculous than a lot of things Javert had experienced even as a policeman, but… 

But it was an _effort_. Frey was not a man – a boy – who did that for anyone. So, somehow, that was… flattering.

Yes, flattering was a good word to describe it.

***

Somehow, despite Frey’s best efforts, they arrived early to the Cour de Cassation anyway.

“Perhaps, Javert,” Frey drawled. “You were simply walking too quickly.” His eyes darted down to the brace on Javert’s leg, raising an eyebrow.

Azelma stifled a giggle behind her hand, and Javert rolled his eyes. “Entertain each other,” he told them. He paused, then added. “But don’t do anything you know I’ll beat Frey up for.”

Frey’s eye twitched for a moment, but Javert was already turning around, head ducked down to hide his grin as he walked through the entrance hall of the Cour. He would rather not stand there until the doors open, so he might as well walk to look around the place. Despite the number of times he had been here, he still barely knew it.

He was about to make a turn down to another hallway when he heard a voice. Instinctively, he stopped. Lifting his cane off of the ground, he moved as silently as he could with metal on one heel to hide behind a nearby pillar.

“—bothering me about the name.” Hushed, hurried. Nearly frantic, but definitely familiar.

Listolier.

“You’ve got a bloody point that you’ve dragged me here to listen to?” Frustrated, but equally hushed. Tholoymes.

What was this about? Did it have anything to do with Valjean’s case?

“It just won’t stop _bothering_ me,” Listolier said, sounding equally – if not even more – frustrated. “Fantine, Fantine. That name. I’ve _heard_ that name before.” 

“Some girl you’ve tumbled in the sheets with, perhaps?” Tholomyés asked, voice practically dripping scorn. “Maybe that girl Valjean adopted, the one that fucker Javert won’t stop talking about, is actually your kid.”

Javert froze. His hand tightened around the head of his cane.

“No, she’s not mine,” Listolier said. “I’m pretty damned sure of that.”

Javert’s fingers relaxed ever so slightly.

“Look,” the man continued. “Do you remember sometime back during our student days, when we were all in Paris together – you, me, Blachevelle and Fameuil?”

“God, this is a rubbish time to start reminiscing.” Tholomyés half-snarled.

“We had four girls amongst the four of us, remember? Mine was Dahlia. There was one named Favourite. Do you remember the other two?”

“Why would I remember the name of women like that?” Tholomyés snorted. “If I did, God, my head will have no space for anything else.”

“At least try to remember,” Listolier urged.

There was a pause. Javert pressed himself closer to the pillar, straining his hearing until he could hear the men’s breaths – Listolier’s jerky, half-tripping over itself; Tholomyés’s more even, hissing every other second through his teeth.

“I don’t remember,” Tholomyés said finally. “What does it matter? Whoever this Fantine is, or whoever those girls were…” There was a verbal shrug; a careless huff.

“They were just whores. Why do they matter?”

 _Don’t punch him_ , Javert told himself immediately, gritting his teeth tightly enough that he could hear his own jaw creak. _You’ll jeopardise Valjean’s case. Don’t be a damned fool_ now.

Slipping his hand into his pocket, he gripped onto his rosary. He held onto it tight, feeling the smooth beads and the blunt edges of the crucifix dig into his flesh. Listolier and Tholomyes were moving down the hallway now, and Javert shifted by instinct, moving so that he would not be seen.

He stood there, counting seconds, counting breaths, until the footsteps faded away and his rage reached a level that he could control.

Then he pushed himself away from the pillar. Deliberately, he set his cane back onto the floor, and walked back to the Cour’s entrance hall.

Pontmercy and Cosette had arrived at some point while he was eavesdropping. They looked up from where their heads were bent towards Azelma – Frey was in the corner, speaking to Clarisse – and their eyes widened when they saw him.

It was Cosette who reached him first, her small hand closing around his elbow. Javert didn’t jerk out of her grasp even though he wanted to.

“Monsieur,” she said, keeping her voice low so they would not be overheard – reporters and gawkers were already streaming in. “Are you alright?”

“Did something happen?” Azelma asked, sounding worried as she came up to his other side.

Javert looked at both girls, one after another, before he ducked his head, sighing. He had been trying to keep his face blank, but somehow they managed to see through him anyway.

“Nothing,” he said, keeping his voice even. “It was nothing. Just a couple of bastards talking about things they don’t know anything about.”

“What,” Azelma started, and trailed off as her attention was caught by something behind Javert’s back. Her eyes widened.

Cosette turned as well. In contrast to Azelma, she didn’t seem surprised. Instead, her lips thinned, and her eyes narrowed.

When Javert turned, Tholomyés and Listolier were entering the entrance hall from a different hallway than the one Javert had come through. They were hovering around Monsieur le Président like flies around a horse, speaking in whispers that turned into indecipherable murmurs by the cavernous echoes of the hall.

“If they said anything, it didn’t matter,” Cosette said fiercely. “Nothing they ever said will ever matter.”

“Nothing,” Azelma echoed. She didn’t sound nearly as certain, but her eyes were just as bright.

Javert nodded. There was nothing more that he could add; not right now.

Pontmercy had been hovering around the three of them while they spoke to each other. Now, his eyes on Tholomyes’s back as he followed Monsieur le Président into the courtroom, he spoke.

“He won’t make a difference now,” he said, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself. “Not at this late stage.”

“No, he won’t,” Cosette said firmly. Without releasing Javert’s arm, she reached out and snagged her fiancé by his sleeve.

“Let’s go in.”

***  
_  
_ Valjean entered the courtroom in chains.

 _The last time_ , Javert told himself, leaning forward from the bench to grip onto the banister. His eyes fixed upon Valjean’s form – he had seen him barely twelve hours ago, yet he found himself drinking in the sight of his straight back and upraised head anyway. 

_This will be the last time_.

When Monsieur le Président walked into the courtroom, it fell silent immediately. The tension in the air was almost thick enough to choke, and Javert watched as hands clenched together or tightened on knees with every single footstep that resounded through the room.

“We came here a full week ago for the second hearing of Jean Valjean’s case,” Monsieur le Président began. “Seven days before that, we came here for the first hearing, where M. Pontmercy and M. Tholomyés first presented their case.”

Slowly, his hands rose. Elbows rested upon the judge’s stand, and his pale eyes narrowed upon all in the court.

“I have not spoken throughout the entire trial for one reason and one only: I had hoped that all of you who are here do not forget the words written on the doorway of this building. _Cour de Cassation_. The court of appeal. This is not a place to judge a man. This is a place that judges those who judge themselves. This court judges if the law has been carried out the same way throughout time and space.”

He paused, eyes scanning from one corner of the room to the other before stopping at Valjean. “Perhaps,” he continued, every word deliberate. “This has become a place that must judge the law itself.”

Javert’s breath stopped in his throat. He swallowed hard, ruthlessly swallowing down the hope that threatened to rise within him. Surely… surely Monsieur le Président did _not_ mean…

“Weeks ago, during the trial of slave number 87452, named Javert, I said that the law must take into account the circumstances of the crime. I asked the court then a question: _why_ does the law differentiate?”

The judge’s eyes did not leave Valjean’s. “Perhaps today we have come to an answer to the question: the law differentiates, and must differentiate, so it does not lower men into the status of beasts when it was created to do the opposite.”

Beside him, Javert felt Frey still completely, eyes widening behind his camera-glasses, leaning forward so much that he was almost falling across the banister. On his other side, Cosette’s knuckles were white where they rested on her lap. The entire courtroom was holding its breath.

Javert did not know what he himself was doing. His mind was blank and scrambling at the same time.

“Perhaps Jean Valjean is an anomaly. Perhaps he is the only good man turned convict in the entire world. Perhaps there are none others like him.” Monsieur le Président shook his head. “If he is, does it matter? Why should it matter? If we do not look with clear eyes upon _every_ man who has broken the law, if we do not look upon him in his entirety – circumstances, intentions, consequences, all – then that is not justice.”

His lips twisted into a dark, mirthless smile. “That is convenience.”

Before anyone in the courtroom could speak, or even think to speak, the judge held up his hand.

“Let us not forget that the law is wielded by Lady Justice. The law _must_ be just.” His hand fell, and he leaned forward, catching Valjean’s eyes again.

Valjean looked as if someone had struck him and as if he was being given everything he had ever wished for at the same time. Javert’s entire body ached at the moment, but he merely tightened his hands on the banister. He could not go to him. Not just yet.

“Jean Valjean, thirty-eight years ago, you were sentenced to five years in prison for theft and breaking and entering because you were starving and wished to save a child. That sentence was not just, but you have already served it, and fourteen more years beside. Neither I, nor the courts, nor anyone else could give those years to you.

“There is only this: you are cleared of every charge. No sword now hangs above your head. You are now Jean Valjean, convict no more.” His lips curved upwards in the barest hint of a smile. “Merely a man.”

Turning away from Valjean – who was still not breathing – he faced the audience. “In clearing you, this court has judged the law,” he said, voice barely loud enough to be heard. Javert leaned in. “The law itself is unjust.”

After a moment to let that sink in, he nodded, standing. “Court is adjourned.”

Those words seemed to break the spell that had fallen over the room. The roar of voices was deafening, but Javert barely heard it, much less distinguished the voices. He had already picked up his cane and was pushing through the crowd, Cosette and Azelma and Frey aiding him, heading towards Valjean.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a few black-visored, black-uniformed guards surround Tholomyés. He watched as they clapped him in irons, grabbing him by both arms even as he yelled and struggled. Memories snuck into his mind: Tholomyés’s wild eyes, full of grief, as he spoke about his son; those same eyes, cold now, as he dismissed Fantine and a group of other women he and his compatriots had once loved as nothing but whores.

Javert shook his head hard. Tholomyés did not matter now. Tearing his eyes away from the man, he watched with barely-repressed impatience as Valjean was freed from his cuffs. He took a step forward, but there was a hand on his elbow.

Azelma shook her head, her eyes darting from side to side. Javert closed his eyes, understanding immediately what he meant. His hands fell back to his sides. At the same time, Cosette practically leaped through the banister, hugging her father hard. 

Pontmercy had reached him then, smiling wide and tremulous. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand before he threw his arms around Cosette and Valjean both, holding onto them tightly, fingers tangling with Cosette’s.

Hesitantly, as if he was still afraid that it was a dream, Valjean’s arms came up to wrap around both of his children. His eyes were wide and lost, staring into nothingness. Javert ached to soothe them, held himself back and bit the inside of his cheek. 

When Cosette and Pontmercy pulled back, Javert finally allowed himself to reach out. He gripped Valjean’s hand tight, his arm practically trembling from the control he needed to not bring those knuckles to his mouth. Instead, he squeezed hard, trying to bring Valjean’s focus back to him, to meet those dark eyes and tell him that this was real and true; that the judgment had been passed and he was _free_.

After long, endless moments, Valjean’s eyes finally focused on his. Javert nodded, a single deliberate motion. 

He was a selfish, self-absorbed creature, because when Valjean nodded back, his lips finally, finally, curving into a smile, he felt such joy in his heart. Such joy that Valjean believed _him_. It might not be Javert’s hands that took away that invisible collar, but it was his hands that first touched that neck after the weight had been removed.

Stepping back, he let go of Valjean’s hand. 

“We,” he started, but his voice cracked in the middle of the word. He shook his head, nodded, and did not know what he was doing. His hand was tingling with Valjean’s heat; he lifted it and dragged it through his hair.

“We’ll let the others congratulate you,” he finished.

Of course he had noticed the small crowd hovering behind them, each one of them eager to reach Valjean. Valjean had touched so many lives with all that he had done – those here were surely a small percentage – and Javert knew he could not be selfish. Not at this moment.

Valjean opened his mouth. His eyes darted past Javert’s shoulders and stayed there, still wide, before he nodded. He swallowed.

Javert did not reach out for him. He did not move. But, somehow, Valjean knew: their gazes met again, deepened, and Javert could see the promise in Valjean’s dark eyes: _Soon._

He closed his eyes. Seven days he had been waiting, each moment agony. But he could wait longer. He might not be able to kiss Valjean right at this moment – not with all these eyes, all these cameras around them – but his own desires meant nothing because now Valjean was _free_.

“I’ll stay here and make sure that none of the reporters get to him,” Frey was saying, his voice coming through entire oceans.

“Thank you, Monsieur,” Cosette replied. 

The small hand on his elbow tightened, and Javert allowed himself to be led away from Valjean. A small part of him noted that the crowds parted before them before they closed in again, and the voices rose again. Valjean’s name was practically being raised as a chant, so often was it spoken. Javert should be happy; should rejoice in the thought of the world finally seeing Valjean as he should be seen.

Yet there was only ache within him. Ache in his fingers, chill in his bones, and he wanted nothing more than to storm right back and take Valjean into his arms and kiss him.

“I’m sorry,” Azelma murmured to him once the four of them were standing in the entrance hall with the courtroom behind them. She looked at him with wide eyes, teeth sunk into her lower lip. “But… you understand why, Monsieur.”

Javert closed his eyes. He leaned harder on his cane, taking a deep breath through his teeth. 

_She knows too_ , he thought dully. Cosette, Frey, Azelma… did Pontmercy knew as well? Did all of them? Guilt rushed up within him. He did not mind if they saw him as a sinner, for that was true, but if it changed how they looked upon Valjean…

“It’s not fair,” Cosette said, her voice small and strangled. “This isn’t fair either. M. Javert should… Papa should...”

No, it did not. He knew that to be true now. 

Opening his eyes, he reached out towards Cosette, resting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright,” he said, the words awkward on his tongue. “It’s only a small thing.”

“But it’s not _fair_ ,” she shook her head hard, curls slipping past her shoulders to smack her cheeks. Javert reached out and brushed them back gently before he squeezed her shoulder again.

“Cosette,” he said softly. “Valjean is free. That’s all that matters right now.”

She focused on him. Taking a deep breath, she nodded. “For now,” she said, and there was a steely determination in her voice that told Javert that she did not think that it did not matter at all.

He opened his mouth to tell her once more that it was alright – if he had Valjean behind closed doors, if those around them were fine with what they had, what did it matter? – but a shadow fell across them.

Immediately, he straightened, his hand moving from Cosette to Azelma to nudge her behind him. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Pontmercy do the same, stepping forward as if to shield Cosette.

Tholomyés stood in front of them. The last time Javert had seen the look in those eyes, his chain was used to strangle him by those very hands. Though now he was no longer in a wheelchair, he found himself nudging Azelma even more behind him with a foot. 

Involuntarily, he adjusted the chain around his shoulder, hand closing around the end of the links. Tholomyés smiled, wide and terrible despite the hands cuffed behind his back. Two guards bracketed him, but Listolier stood behind him, his eyes gleaming with a dark light.

He was looking at Cosette.

In that instant, the conversation he overheard came back to him. Javert opened his mouth, but before he could do so, Tholomyes was already taking a step forward towards Cosette. His lips were stretched wide in an oily smile that was, Javert supposed, meant to be charming.

“Your mother’s name is Fantine, right?” Tholomyes asked.

Cosette looked at him with cold eyes behind her glasses, her hand on Pontmercy’s shoulder; most likely to stop him from saying a word.

“Yes,” she said. “What is it to you?” 

Her tone could start a snowstorm in the room. Javert had never once heard her sound like this. 

“I remember her, you know,” Tholomyes said. _Liar_ , Javert thought, but he swallowed back the words, watching Cosette.

“Or, well, I remember a woman named Fantine. A beautiful woman, sweet and gentle. Everything a man could want.” 

He paused for effect. He received nothing but four silent, stony stares.

Tholomyés coughed. “We had been lovers around eighteen years ago, sometime after my son,” his eyes flickered towards Javert, hatred hovering around the edges, “was born. We had a daughter, my Fantine and I. I named that child Euphrasie, but Fantine had always called that girl by a sweeter name.”

His smile widened. He took another step forward. Javert’s hand twitched around the head of his cane.

“Cosette, was it?”

There was a momentary flash in Cosette’s eyes, something dark like horror. Javert was stepping forward, but before he could even do anything, Azelma stepped out behind him.

She punched Tholomyés hard enough that his head snapped backwards with an audible _crack_. 

“Ah, my apologies,” she said, looking from Tholomyés to the guards. Her smile was wide, guileless, and purely _Cosette_. “My hand slipped.”

Javert stared. He opened her mouth.

“You…” Tholomyés began, his face beginning to purple with rage. “I’ll—”

During his sputtering speech, Cosette had elbowed Pontmercy out of the way. Now she punched Tholomyés on the other side of the face. Javert noted, a little distantly, that she remembered to tuck her thumb beneath her fingers.

“Ah,” Cosette said. Her smile would mirror Azelma exactly if not for the teeth she bared. “My apologies, Monsieur.” Her eyes shifted towards the guards. “Messieurs. My hand slipped too. I am very clumsy, you see.”

 _What_.

Tholomyés snarled. He took a step forward, but stumbled when a hand slapped onto his shoulder and dragged him backwards.

The guard flipped his visor upwards. The face that looked back was freckled and terribly young – more of a boy than a man. He grinned first at Cosette, then at Azelma.

“You should take more care, Mesdemoiselles,” he said, his voice trembling with barely-repressed mirth. “Such beautiful women should not dirty their hands with filth.”

Cosette dipped into a curtsey, her face dimpling as her smile widened. “Thank you for your warning, Monsieur.”

The other guard snorted loudly. He, too, flipped up his visor, revealing a face that was at least two decades older than his partner’s, but no less amused. “We’re not allowed to say this, but fuck that,” he declared, shaking his head. He looked at the four of them, and his grin widened.

“Thank you,” he said. There was a pause, and he shrugged. “You made this boring job really interesting for once.”

Listolier’s face was pale, and his eyes were darting between the guards, Cosette, and Tholomyés, who was frozen as if he could not believe what had happened. He was gaping. At that moment, Javert felt pity for him – he felt rather the same way, too.

“Come on, let’s get you to the wagon,” the older guard said, grabbing Tholomyés by the arm again. He pulled hard, and his partner grabbed the other arm.

“We witnessed a historic moment and all you can say is that it’s _interesting_?” the younger guard said over Tholomyés head, giving his partner an incredulous look.

“Hey, I’m speaking the truth,” the other man replied. “And what’s this nonsense about history?”

Together, they dragged Tholomyés towards the great doors of the Cour de Cassation, still bickering. They stopped at the doors, and the older guard crooked his fingers at Listolier, who followed after them with stumbling steps.

Javert watched as the two lawyers were shoved into the police wagon. The guards were still bickering as they closed the doors. The younger man met his eyes, and threw a cheeky salute before he slammed his visor back closed.

Guards that acted like men instead of machines dispensing law. Girls who threw punches and stood up against a man whom the law said had far greater power than they did. Rich, powerful men being treated as little more than common gutter trash. Javert’s shoulders shook in helpless laughter, and he turned his head back.

Valjean was half-buried beneath people who were either shaking his hand, patting his back, or trying to do both at the same time.

 _Look at the changes you’ve made_ , he told the man in his thoughts. _Look at what you’ve done_.

“Cosette,” Pontmercy said, sounding worried. Javert dragged his eyes back to watch as Pontmercy took his fiancée’s face in his hands, looking into her eyes. “Are you alright?”

There was a moment of silence before Cosette sighed. She pulled off her glasses and dropped her head onto Pontmercy’s shoulder.

“I have a father and he is a good man,” she said, voice muffled. “Everything I know to be good and true, I learned from him. No one else is. No one else _matters_.”

Azelma stepped forward and drew her arm around Cosette’s waist, tugging the other girl to lean against her. Cosette took a shuddering breath. She lifted her head, and blinked away the tears welling up in her eyes.

“All _he_ ,” her head jerked shakily towards the double doors of the Cour, “did was to try to put my Papa in prison again. He doesn’t matter. I hate him.”

She took a deep breath. “I hate him,” she said viciously. “I hate him, I hate him, I _hate him_. He’s not…” 

Words seemed to fail her. Pontmercy looked helpless, wrapping his arms around her and pressing kisses into her hair as she clung to him.

“You know,” Azelma said, tugging at Cosette’s arm until the other girl faced her. “I’ve been thinking… sometimes, it really doesn’t matter who the law or nature or whoever else says who your parents are.” Her smile was crooked and indescribably sorrowful at the edges. Javert reached out, knowing exactly the spectre who was haunting her.

Azelma did not turn, but she squeezed his hand nonetheless. “Sometimes we are unlucky. Sometimes we get… we get bastards instead of fathers.” She took a deep breath. “It’s who you choose that matters.”

“It’s who you choose,” Cosette echoed. She turned to face Azelma, her dark eyes searching Azelma’s lighter ones for a long moment before she nodded. “I choose… I choose Papa. He saved me. He is good. He is kind.” She scrubbed her face hard, and took another deep, shuddering breath.

“My Papa is Jean Valjean,” she said, voice stronger. “No one else is. I don’t care about anyone else who might claim the same.”

“Valjean would tell you to give that bastard a chance,” Javert said, a little wry. “Get to know him.”

He shrugged when Cosette turned to him. “I’d say that he’s a bastard and nothing more than that.”

Javert could have dismissed Tholomyés’s attempt at ruining his own life. It failed; it did not matter. In fact, he could have even thanked the man for trying, because the first step towards Valjean’s freedom came from Tholomyés’s first flagrant abuse of the law, now almost a year ago.

But he could not forgive the man for what he said about Fantine; about the woman who bore him a child and who tried everything she could to raise that child, _his_ child, despite all the ruin and misery she went through for it. Tholomyés did not know, but he did not _care_ either.

His lips thinned, and he shook his head. “Are you going to tell him about this?” he asked Cosette.

She looked at him for a moment, placing her glasses back on her nose. “Not yet,” she said quietly. “I don’t… I don’t want to lie to Papa. But I know that he’ll doubt that I will always see him as Papa, no matter what anyone else has done, so…” Her eyes flickered downwards, and she smoothed down her dress needlessly.

“I need time to find the right words,” she continued quietly.

Javert opened his mouth. Valjean wouldn’t doubt, he wanted to say. But his jaw clicked back shut only after a second, because _of course_ he would.

“Better find them quickly,” he told her. “He doesn’t like secrets.”

Cosette smiled. Beside her, Pontmercy failed to stifle a snort. “He only likes to _keep_ them,” she said, huffing.

“Who likes to keep what?”

All of them turned. Valjean stood at the doorway of the courtroom, looking a little awkward with his hands shoved into his pockets. 

“Papa!” Cosette flung herself at him. Frey, a little distance behind, shifted away so he wouldn’t fall over as Valjean stumbled back a step. “It’s nothing.”

“Oof,” Valjean let out. He hugged Cosette back hard again. After a moment, he pulled back, and his eyes narrowed immediately as his hand cupped her face.

“Were you crying?”

“I was,” Cosette said. She sniffled. “But I’m just so happy.” She gave him a watery smile. “I’m so happy that you’re my Papa.”

Valjean’s gaze softened immediately, and he kissed her on the forehead. “Oh, Cosette,” he said, embracing her again. “That’s nothing to cry about.”

Was it Valjean who taught her how to twist the truth so effectively, or is it just something Cosette had always been capable of? Javert turned away. His gaze met Azelma’s, and her smile was wry as she shrugged.

“Monsieur,” Frey said. He was looking past all of them to the great double doors of the Cour, where more people were streaming in, all wearing camera-glasses. “We should go before you’re mobbed again.”

“It was not a mob,” Valjean corrected absentmindedly. When Frey cocked a brow at him, jerking his head towards the growing crowd, he blanched a little.

“Alright, let’s go.”

Somehow, they managed to escape the crowds without answering any questions, finally reaching Pontmercy’s car. Frey opened his mouth then, probably to excuse himself, but Azelma rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the sleeve, dragging him inside and slamming the door behind her.

The car was barely large enough to fit all of them, forcing them to squeeze together a little awkwardly. Valjean’s warmth pressed hard against Javert’s side, and Javert bit his lip, keeping his hands on his lap and his eyes fixed forward so he would not turn.

When callused fingers stroked over his wrist and tangled with his own, Javert jerked. He stared at Valjean, then upwards towards the rest of the inhabitants in the car.

They were all looking determinedly out of the windows. Frey, sitting closest to them, looked at him. He deliberately took off his camera-glasses and dropped them into his shirt pocket. Then he went back to stare intently out of the window as if it contained the most interesting thing he had ever seen.

Javert wanted to laugh. But he couldn’t, not when Valjean was smiling at him with such brilliance in his eyes. Hesitantly, Javert turned towards him, raising their joined hands. His lips kissed each knuckle, shuddering as Valjean’s other hand stroked over his cheek then down his neck, slipping once more beneath the collar.

Valjean nodded. And Javert leaned forward even more, their foreheads touching as his eyes fell shut. Blindly, he reached out, fingers spreading out over the brand hidden under the shirt. Then upwards, over the throat. The skin shuddered beneath his hand as Valjean swallowed.

Javert’s lips ached to kiss him. But he forced himself to remain still. There would be plenty of time for that, and this was almost too much even though they were surrounded by those who knew and understood. Valjean’s breath, skittering over his skin, would have to do for now.

He did not know how long they stayed like this. Somehow, by unspoken signal, they pulled away again. But Valjean’s fingers remained tangled with his own, and Javert had no wish to pull away either.

“Well,” Pontmercy said. The sound of his voice was like a gunshot, and everyone in the car turned to stare at him.

Clearing his throat, he ducked his head. It did not hide his blush. “I, uh… I have no idea what to do now.” He lifted his eyes, looking at all of them. “All I had planned were these two trials.”

Javert leaned back against the leather of the car seat, his eyes glancing towards the window. Unbidden, his mind brought forward images: a man in a ragged orange jumpsuit, a shadow of who he used to be; a woman with brokenness in her eyes and determination in her spine, chased out to the streets by unfair laws.

“I have cases to you, if you’re ready for them,” he said quietly. “Two cases: a man, and a woman.”

His eyes flickered towards Pontmercy. “They won’t be as clear-cut as mine or Valjean’s.”

Pontmercy met his gaze. After a moment, he sat straighter. “Nothing that’s worth doing is easy,” he said quietly. He paused, then his shoulders shook a little.

“A man, and a woman,” he said. “What’s next, the country?”

“Why not?” Javert cocked his head. He did not look at Frey. “Monsieur le Président had already said in front of one and all: the laws need to be changed. What is that if not changing the country?”

There was a moment of silence. Pontmercy’s mouth fell open. He gaped.

“A revolution,” Frey said, sounding giddy. He slapped a hand over his eyes, bending over as his shoulders shook. Not even Javert could tell if he was laughing or crying.

Javert nodded. He met Pontmercy’s eyes for a moment before shifting to Valjean. He squeezed the hand in his own. “For the sake of a man.”

Valjean looked startled. He shook his head instantly. “For all those who deserve it,” he said.

“For a man,” Javert corrected. “One no worse than any other man.”

Before they could argue, Pontmercy made a sound that resembled a choked sob. He leaned into Cosette, looking at all of them with wide eyes.

“Perhaps… perhaps that is my place,” he said. “Perhaps that’s what I’m meant to do.”

He swallowed. His gaze darted throughout the car, finally resting on Javert. “You might not think well of them, Monsieur, but if I do this, I think… I think they would be proud of me.”

There were ghosts in Pontmercy’s eyes. The shapes and forms were unfamiliar to Javert, but he knew that darkness and those shadows well.

Javert had his alleyway. Pontmercy had his barricade. 

“I do not know them, Marius,” he said, and smiled wryly at the start the man gave him at the use of his first name.

“But even if the dead are not, the living will be.”

Valjean’s hand brushed his jaw, and Javert turned towards him. There were shadows there too, in the shape of a prison. Ripping off the collar would not chase them away so easily.

“In time, we will all be free,” Valjean said.

Frey’s hand dropped from his face, and he looked at all of them. 

“We will all be free,” he echoed. The pain was stark in his gaze, and Javert knew _his_ shadows were shaped like a looming castle. One full of corpses, and inhabited by one lonely man trapped there by the fears of another.

“Free,” Azelma said, her voice a little shaky. She tugged upon her hair, and her smile steadied as she met Javert’s eyes. Thénardier haunted her eyes.

Cosette looked at all of them. Her eyes were the brightest of them all, but Javert knew she had shadows too. Ones kept at bay by her long years beside Valjean’s light, perhaps, but lingering still, nonetheless.

“It will come,” she said, steely determination in her voice. “It will come.”

Javert closed his eyes.

This was what the world had done to them, and it was not just. Perhaps they could not rid themselves of those shadows entirely; perhaps the darkness would dog them for eternity. But the ghosts could be laid to rest.

They would be.

_End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I am finally _done_ with this fic with the exception of the epilogues. Yes, multiple. Because lol what is my wordcount with this fic. 
> 
> There will be two epilogues, and the posting schedule for them remains the same. Each one is generally the length of a Book III chapter, aha.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slave Javert stops being a slave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Epilogue One: Equal Men (Four, 2139)**
> 
> **Warnings:** Explicit depiction of panic attack and post-traumatic stress disorder. Unhealthy methods of self-definition. Explicit depiction of informal D/s and sexual relations between males. (Do I still need to warn for that…?)

The auction house loomed large in front of him. It had stood and remained despite the repealing of the laws that allowed convicts to be turned into slaves a year ago, for while there would not be new slaves made, there were still plenty who needed to serve out the remainder of their sentences.

It would take another decade at least before it would be demolished entirely.

Change came like the construction of a building: step by step, brick by brick. Whether it was the change of a man’s mind or that of a country, it was the same. Even when there were men like Valjean who could destroy previous assumptions, the processes of making new ones were slow; almost painfully so.

Valjean stopped when he realised that Javert had stilled at the steps of the auction house, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. His hand was wrapped loosely around the end of the chain that Javert would have to wear for the last time today, and he turned.

“Javert?” he asked. He stepped closer. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” Javert said, and that was true. He met Valjean’s eyes, lips quirking up slightly. “I was simply thinking.”

“About?”

“Change.” He sighed when Valjean continued looking at him. “And how this place always seems to be either the harbinger of it or come directly after it has happened.” He paused. “For me, at least.”

“Surely there are better symbols?” Valjean asked. He glanced behind him, brows furrowing. “This place... I had hoped that when they repealed the law, they would have freed the other slaves as well.”

“That would’ve ended up with me thrown back into prison,” Javert replied wryly. When Valjean made to protest, he shook his head, reaching out and sliding his fingers beneath Valjean’s cuffs. Despite his four-years-long freedom, Valjean still hid them, and this had somehow become Javert’s way of giving comfort for those same years.

“Besides, I’ve told you before, haven’t I? I have been free since the first time you told me to not call you Master.”

“When I ordered you to call me by my name,” Valjean corrected gently. His rough fingers slid over Javert’s knuckles. “I remember. But it is not the same.”

“Well, this will be gone now,” Javert said, tipping head back to tap on the collar. He cocked an eyebrow. “Once we get inside there.”

Valjean huffed. “ _You_ were the one who stopped,” he pointed out, but turned around and started walking into the auction house once more.

The man behind the counter was not one that Javert recognised; not a surprise, given that he had not stepped into this place in years; not since Frey returned his contract to Valjean, four years ago now. 

“Transfer or release?” he asked brusquely, not looking up from the heavy wooden counter.

“Release,” Valjean said.

“Slave number?”

“87452,” Javert said, resting his fingers against Valjean’s wrist again to forestall the anger he knew that would rise.

There was a moment of silence broken up by the tapping the keys. Then the handler looked up, blinking. “Oh,” he said, sounding a little stunned. “It’s the two of you.”

Javert resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Such a reaction had been embarrassing at first, but nowadays, it was simply tiring.

Sometimes he hated Frey for making Valjean a symbol, despite all the good it did and the hope it brought to all those gutter-lost and wretched: in doing so, he had ended up making _Javert_ into one as well, and that was… embarrassing was an inadequate word to describe it, but he had nothing else.

“Yes,” he said, unable to keep the dryness from creeping into his tone as the handler continued to stare. “Are you going to keep looking?”

The man opened his mouth. Closed it. He shook his head hard, obviously clearing it, before he stepped out from behind the wooden counter.

“Come with me,” he said. Then, after a moment, he added much more hesitantly, “Please.”

They followed him to a small room that was entirely bare except for the glass-and-metal desk in the centre and the flag with an eagle on one wall. Javert glanced at the flag for a moment before the _beep_ of the machine turning on caught his attention.

“Open case file for release: slave number 87452.” The handler paused, glancing at Javert, then Valjean, for a moment before he nodded to himself and continued. “For M. Javert.”

Javert blinked. He opened his mouth, but nothing escaped him. This was… entirely too new, and almost too much to process at the moment.

The holographic projections filled the room. “Slave number 87452,” a mechanical voice said, end consonants clipped. “Sentenced to five years for voluntary manslaughter. Sentence complete as of 27 August, 2139.”

A long _beep_ shrieked from the collar. Javert winced, hands twitching in effort to not press them to his ears.

It stopped as suddenly as it started. There was a _click_ , and Javert found a sudden space between his throat and the collar as it snapped open by itself. He swallowed, and forced himself to not reach out.

“Last order of business is to remove the collar,” the handler said. He looked up, glancing between Javert and the still-silent Valjean nervously. He licked his lips. “Most ex-slaves prefer to do it themselves.”

Javert turned. He looked at Valjean, lips quirking slightly. Valjean reached up and unhooked the chain. It fell down limp in his hand. Javert did not look at it, instead holding that dark gaze as he tipped his head back in offer.

Metal links clattered onto glass. Valjean reached forward with both hands, and Javert fought down a shiver as callused fingers scraped over his neck. Heavy metal protested as it was twisted open, further than it was made to go, before Valjean dropped the piece of scrap metal onto the table as well.

_You have felt this before_ , Javert told himself. Once, when the collar was changed from proximity alarm to tracking device. But that seemed such a long time ago, and the collar’s weight had become so familiar that his throat felt strange. His entire body felt strange with it gone. Too light, weightless, almost…

He swallowed hard. He swayed from side to side. His head spun. He forced himself to take a single inhale, then let it out. And again. Hysteria prodded at him, because it was ridiculous, absolutely so, that he was relearning how to _breathe_ again.

Was this how Valjean had felt when he was freed, four years ago? He didn’t know. He should ask. But his throat refused to work.

“Is there anything else?” he heard Valjean ask. There was a hand on his elbow, steadying him.

“Nothing else, M. Valjean,” the handler replied. “You are both free to leave.”

There should be something. The ruined collar, for example. Surely Valjean would have to pay for it to be replaced? But did it need to be replaced at all? There were _so many_ in that other room, and there wouldn’t be any more slaves made. Perhaps Valjean had done the auction house a favour by destroying this one.

His head spun. Stars crept into the edge of his vision. His feet moved without him willing them, stumbling after Valjean as he was practically dragged out of the auction house, into a street, and into a side alley. The same side alley that they came to when he was first transferred to Frey.

“Calm, Javert,” Valjean said, his voice just carrying the slightest frantic edge. Javert opened his mouth to tell him that he was fine, that this was ridiculous, but he could not breathe all of the sudden when he felt bricks beneath his hand.

One alleyway faded into another. Years disappeared as time curled into itself. The last time he did not have a collar, the last time he was not inside a cage, he had been here. Here with a gun in his hand and blood at his feet. Blood and bone and brains. Everywhere, it was _everywhere_ , colouring everything red and there were even red spots at the back of his eyelids now.

Calluses over his cheeks. Valjean’s hands around his face. Javert gasped for breath, body bending forward as he was tugged down. Valjean kissed him; kissed him and pressed their bodies together. Javert drew in a sharp breath that scraped at the back of his throat, and the very feel of his throat expanding without meeting a constriction made his head spin again.

The alleyway had not come to him in _months_. He should be free; he _was_. So why…

Valjean’s mouth left his. A hand settled in Javert’s hair, sitting there gently. Javert shook his head, trying to form words, to _think_. But his throat did not have a familiar weight and he no longer knew how to breathe without it.

Then there _was_ weight. Valjean’s hand was around his throat. Thicker than the collar and softer, different, but _weight_ nonetheless. Javert dragged in a breath, then another, practically panting. He shook his head again. The hand squeezed, just slightly. Just enough to constrict his breathing, preventing him from taking too-deep breaths.

Instantly, Javert’s head cleared. The red retreated. The years uncurled and returned. He was not in that alleyway. He was outside the auction house, not en route to the Seine. He shuddered hard, hand closing around Valjean’s wrist, keeping his hand there on his throat as he tried to steady himself.

“My God,” Valjean said, his voice thick with horror. “What did the collar _do_ to you?”

Slowly, Javert opened his eyes. He met Valjean’s, lips curving upwards. It was a weak, watery thing, shaky at the edges from his still-ragged breathing.

“I don’t know,” he said, coughing slightly. Valjean’s grip loosened at his throat. Javert shook his head immediately, pressing it there again.

“Just… just keep it there,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut because this was humiliating. What sort of man was he that he couldn’t live without a damned collar on his throat? “Just for a while more. Please.”

Valjean moved closer, bracketing Javert between him and the wall. His lips found Javert’s jaw, kissing him there shakily. Then his head dropped onto Javert’s shoulder. Javert turned his head, blindly kissing a temple, a cheek, most of his focus turned inwards as he made his lungs work, one breath at a time.

“I’m—” Javert licked his lips when he realised how wrecked his voice sounded. He closed his eyes, focusing on the weight around his throat again. It steadied him, calmed down his heartbeat until he could speak again. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Valjean said, muffled. “Just… I… God.” 

“It’s okay,” Javert said stupidly, because what else could he sound when it seemed that the only thing keeping him sane right now was Valjean’s hand around his throat? “I’m… I’ll be fine. Just… just give me a little time.”

“Mm,” Valjean nodded. There was water soaking into Javert’s shirt, and Javert cursed himself. His head dropped backwards, hitting the brick wall.

Bad idea; that motion loosened Valjean’s hand. Rapids roared in his ears, and he gritted his teeth hard, trying to control himself. He couldn’t stay here forever, he tried to rationalise. Valjean _had_ to let go at some point.

But his body – his mind – refused to listen. He started to shake again, control over his breathing flying out of his hands. There was something wet in his hair and it smelled of blood—

The hand tightened once more. And it went away all over again. Javert breathed, trying to make sure his legs stayed standing; so he wouldn’t fall to his knees like everything was screaming for him to.

“Please don’t cry,” he said, more than a little belated.

Valjean’s head lifted from his shoulder. Dark eyes shining with tears met his own, and Javert tried to smile. Valjean shuddered, just once, before his lips crashed against Javert’s. Javert clutched onto him with the one hand free, trying to kiss back but probably only messing up Valjean’s beard, his chin.

After a moment, Valjean pulled away. Their eyes met for a moment. Javert didn’t know what it was that Valjean saw in his own eyes; didn’t know what it was that made him nod and step away just a little.

“Hold onto this for me,” he said, holding out his own cuff.

Javert stared at him. Even as his did, his body automatically obeyed, fingers closing around the edge of the cloth.

With one swift move, Valjean ripped off one long strip, revealing the shackle-scars on his wrist that had never once seen the light of the day. Javert swallowed, mouth opening to ask Valjean what he was doing.

Then the cloth looped around his throat. “Hold this edge,” Valjean instructed, and Javert obeyed instinctively. The cloth pressed against his throat where he was touching it, pressed against his windpipe. Even though he knew the fingers were his own, they still kept the blood and the alleyway and the river at bay even when Valjean removed his hand.

He tipped his head back without needing to be asked. Valjean tied a knot with the cloth around his neck, tight enough to press into skin. The weight wasn’t nearly the same, even less than the hand, but it was _something_.

“Okay?” Valjean asked.

It was something: when Valjean moved away, when Javert’s own hand dropped to his side, he could still breathe.

Slowly, he nodded.

“The knot can be loosened,” Valjean said haltingly. “I’ll loosen it once every hour. Until…” he trailed off.

“Until I can breathe without it,” Javert said, the words coming out of him in a rush. He rubbed his hand over his face. “Yeah. Yeah, that works. Yeah.”

_Stupid_ , he scolded himself. 

He would have continued, but Valjean was cupping his face with both hands. Dark eyes bored into his, making Javert’s thought processes screech to a stop.

When they kissed, Valjean’s mouth tasted of salt, of tears. He clung to Javert hard, pressing their chests together until Javert could feel the steady thrum of that strong heart against his own ribs. Every breath he took was tinged with Valjean’s warmth, sinking into his lungs, soothing the ache that had seated itself within.

Their mouths moved together slowly. Tasting, exploring. Cleansing in ways Javert could not describe. His hands clenched onto Valjean’s shoulder and bicep, feeling the coiled strength beneath the clothes. It anchored him, centred him like Valjean had done for the past five years. 

Second by second, heartbeat by heartbeat, Javert felt himself calm. Not entirely, a part of his mind still shrieking incoherently about the change in weight, but enough that he could speak. Could _function_.

He sighed, lips parting by silent accord. Then he leaned forward until his forehead touched Valjean’s. Valjean’s hand slid to the back of his neck, sliding beneath the cloth, making it press against Javert’s throat as he stroked his nape.

Embarrassingly, Javert heard himself moan.

Valjean stilled against him. Javert opened his mouth, trying to explain, or say something, anything, when Valjean did it again, more hesitantly this time, and what came out of his mouth was a ragged pant, twisted in so much desire that he almost choked on it.

“You…” Valjean trailed off. “Is it… is it because of the collar?”

Javert would reply, but Valjean was already stroking over his neck again, and he _groaned_ instead, head dropping backwards. Oh God, he was hard; he was hard and his blood was rushing in his veins and this dizziness was entirely unlike before.

“I don’t know,” he gasped out. When Valjean tensed, when he threatened to pull away, Javert shook his head.

“But- I wanted to-” he swallowed hard. “I _want_ to kneel. To you. For you. I…” He shook his head hard. “God, I don’t know anymore. But I _want_ this.”

Valjean’s breath was hot and wet against his ear. Javert arched, shoulders pressing against the brick, when the finger tugged on the cloth around his neck. He shoved his palm into his mouth when Valjean’s knee slid against his thigh, stifling himself as his underwear slid over his cock.

“If you want to,” he babbled, not even sure about the words pouring out of him, “If you want- I’d- I’d wear a collar for you. In the house. In the bedroom. I _want_ to. God, I want to and I don’t know why I do but I _want_ to—” he forced himself to stop, sucking a breath through his teeth as Valjean tugged again at his collar. “If you keep doing that, I’m going to come.”

“Just like that?” Valjean asked. 

Javert nodded. His face was flushed now, from embarrassment and arousal both. He wasn’t even sure how he got here, wherever _here_ was. But the alleyway and the river were both far away, and he wasn’t even tempted to think about them.

“Tell me that this isn’t your way of trying to punish yourself,” Valjean told him, quiet but fierce. “Tell me that this isn’t another way that your body is trying to punish you for something that is no fault of yours.”

_How_? He didn’t even know that himself. No- he knew. He _knew_ the shadows, had been dealing with them for years, and they were not there now. There was only… only heat, so much of it. Heat and warmth, chasing away any incoming chill or shadows. Bracketing him, keeping him safe—

_Oh_.

He sucked in another breath through his teeth, a shaky hand rising to rub through his hair. Forcing open his eyes, he met Valjean’s.

“It’s not,” he said. “It’s… I want this. No.” He scrubbed his hand over his hand. “I…”

Once, he had the law that kept his spine straight. He had his uniform. Then he had the collar, a solid bracket around his throat that defined him as _slave._ Now he had neither. Neither, but he had Valjean, who was now looking at him with patient eyes. 

Maybe it was a deficiency in his being, this formless self that threatened to shatter without support; without the ability to look upon himself and be able to define himself with a single word.

Funny how he could have a thousand words for everyone else, a million for Valjean alone, and yet he could only have a single one for himself.

Swallowing hard, he nudged at Valjean, urging him to give him some space. When Valjean stepped back, Javert took a deep breath.

It was a dirty alleyway. Anyone could come in at the moment. But Javert fell to his knees anyway. Carefully, deliberately, keeping his eyes on Valjean and seeing how his breath caught in his throat.

“I need this.”

Then, before Valjean could speak or try to pull him to his feet, Javert continued, words pouring out of him in a rush:

“See, I- I used to be the law. Then I wasn’t. I was a convict, and then I was a slave,” he grabbed Valjean’s bare wrist, bringing it to his mouth to stop Valjean to speaking.

“That was how I defined myself. That’s the _only_ way I know how to. Now I’m neither. And I’m neither and I don’t-” he hesitated. “I _don’t know_ how to define myself except like this.” 

He ducked his head, taking a shuddering breath. Then, still holding Valjean’s gaze with his own, he brought the hand to his neck, over the makeshift collar. 

“I can be yours. I want to be. I _need_ to be. And I know it’s not fair to you, to have to carry a burden like that. I _know_ , but I can’t help it, and—”

Before he could continue, Valjean was beside him, bending himself into half and kissing Javert hard. His hand closed around Javert’s neck, warm skin over thin cloth, and Javert groaned into Valjean’s mouth as he was brought to his feet.

Valjean’s fingers trailed over his cheek. “You’re more than just a word,” he said, voice heavy with sorrow. “You’re _far_ more than that.”

Javert opened his mouth, wanting to say that he _knew_ that, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. But Valjean seemed to understand, because his hand squeezed lightly over Javert’s throat, pressing into his windpipe, stopping his breath just for a moment.

“I’m not sure if you noticed, but I’m pretty useful with carrying things,” Valjean said, his lips quirking upwards. “But even if I’m not, it’s not… it’s not a burden, Javert. If you need me to do this, if you _trust_ me enough to do this…”

“Of course I do,” Javert said, unable to help himself. “Of course I trust you.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Valjean nodded. He leaned in and kissed Javert again, the barest brush of the lips. “But you need to promise me something.”

His smile widened. “You don’t know how to define yourself beyond a single word,” he said, thumb sliding over Javert’s mouth. Javert nodded mutely.

“Try,” Valjean told gently. “Try to see what I see. What everyone around you sees. You’re so much _more_. You’re _Javert_ , and that means a thousand things, all worthy, all desirable.” He kissed Javert again, slow and lingering.

“You’ll be mine as long as you want to be,” he said against Javert’s mouth, those words sliding warm into his lungs. “And I’ll be yours in return. But you are more than that. _Far_ more than that.”

Javert closed his eyes. He leaned his forehead against Valjean’s, hands spreading out to feel the warm strength of him. The steady thrum of his heart over the brand that was still on his chest but now meant nothing at all.

“I’ll try,” he said, forcing the words out of a closing throat. He swallowed hard. “I don’t know how to, but I will.”

Valjean turned his head, his smile a brand against Javert’s jaw as he peppered kisses onto his beard. “Let’s go home,” he murmured.

“Let me show you all I see of you.”

He had no idea what that meant. But he trusted Valjean wholly. Years ago, he said he would give himself to him, and he had. And throughout all these years, Valjean had held those broken-shattered pieces so gently, so carefully, putting them back together, surrounding him with heat that warmed instead of hurt.

How could he not trust him after all that he had seen and heard and felt?

Taking Valjean’s hand, he kissed the scarred knuckles one by one, watching through hooded eyes as Valjean’s eyes darkened further.

“Let’s go home.”

***

They still lived in the house on Rue Plumet.

“There has been and will be too much change,” Valjean had said when Cosette had asked him about it after her marriage a year ago. “I hope that this will become a place that will be a reprieve from it. A safe harbour for all those who feel tossed around by the tides.”

No one had asked him to move after that; not even after the government finally came more to their senses and paid him reparations for the years he had to spend on the run due to unfair laws. Valjean had, of course, used the money to start up an organisation that would reach out its arms to as many charities as it could, doling out mercy towards those the changing laws still could not reach.

Javert allowed himself to linger on those thoughts, hands shoving back into his pockets in a futile attempt to hide his trembling fists, as he followed Valjean from the entrance hall towards the bedroom. Valjean had brought along both of the silver candlesticks from above the gas fireplace in the living room, and he was bent over the nightstand as he lit them.

The curtains were pulled close since they left the house – a necessary precaution these days when their fame seemed to reach the most obscure corners of the country and threatened to spill over the borders. And now the candlelight cast the room with a soft glow that made Valjean’s tanned skin radiant.

Swallowing hard, Javert closed the door.

“Where do you want me?” he asked, his voice thick in his throat.

Valjean turned around, and his smile was small but genuine. He strode over to Javert, drawing one hand from its pocket-nest with a gentle touch to his wrist. And Javert was shivering, helplessly, as thin lips and rough beard brushed his knuckles.

“Here,” Valjean murmured. 

He tugged gently and Javert went with him, nearly stumbling over his feet over the few steps towards the wardrobe. The door pulled open, and Javert stared at his own reflection – the grey hair going whiter by the day, both on his head and his jaw; the increased lines around his eyes; the creeping high flush on his cheeks.

“Take hold of the door,” Valjean said, his voice barely audible, more felt against Javert’s neck than in his ear. “Try to not break it, alright?”

Javert closed his eyes. He reached up and took hold of the top of the door before he could even think to object.

“What,” he licked his lips. “What are you planning to do?”

“Well,” Valjean said, sounding thoughtful. His fingers tugged on the cloth on Javert’s neck, pulling back until the thin fabric stretched over and pressed against the windpipe. And Javert trembled, just once, as Valjean’s lips found the spot just above the cloth, scraping his beard over the skin.

“I did tell you that I want you to see what I see,” Valjean said. “To realise what it means to me when you made a gift of yourself.”

“You’ve already told me,” Javert protested even as he tipped his head, groaning as those teasing fingers moved to his throat, sliding over stubbled skin and ghosting over his pulse. “You’ve shown me so many times.”

“But it’s not sticking,” Valjean pointed out. Before Javert could protest – or even apologise – Valjean was already undoing the buttons of his shirt, one by one, until there was space enough that he could slip his hand in to spread over Javert’s heart. “So I think I will have to try a little harder.”

“That’s not,” Javert tried, but Valjean was rocking his hips forward. The heat and hardness of him brushed against the crease of Javert’s ass through layers of cloth, and Javert’s head dropped down, chin touching his chest as he groaned low in his throat.

“Not your fault,” he said finally.

“Maybe not,” Valjean told him, finishing unbuttoning the shirt. It hung from Javert’s shoulders, strangely loose in comparison to his still-buttoned cuffs. “But I can do something about it, so won’t you let me?”

“I’ll let you do anything,” Javert said, because that was true too. He turned his head, biting onto a sleeve as Valjean’s hand cupped him through his jeans, thumb stroking over the underside through heavy denim. “You know that.”

“I do know that,” Valjean said, his lips going back to Javert’s neck. “That’s why I want to show you what it means to me. To have your trust. Your complete trust.”

Rough thumbs brushed over Javert’s chest, over the graying hairs. “Open your eyes,” Valjean told him, the gentleness of his voice belying the rough order. “Keep them open. Don’t close them.”

Javert nodded. He watched, in the mirror, as Valjean’s shackle-scars brushed over the puckered flesh left behind by the bullets more than four years ago. He kept it there, fingers tapping lightly over Javert’s ribs, right over the places where the bones had been broken by the bullets’ impact.

Then the hand moved upwards, stroking over a scar that crawled from the collarbone down to his side – a knife wound from nearly a decade ago that stretched and pulled whenever he moved. Slowly, Valjean touched every single scar, pushing away the cotton shirt as his thumb rubbed gently at one right below the armpit where a bullet from a captured and convicted murderer from twelve years ago that had torn through the skin and fractured his rib.

“Look at that,” Valjean said quietly, his lips now moving over Javert’s jaw, near enough to the edge of his mouth. Javert’s mouth opened, harsh pants wetting his lips, but Valjean did not kiss him.

“The scars you have were all received in the line of duty,” Valjean said. “Selflessly putting yourself into danger without thought about losing your life, because you thought it was what you must do. To protect those who could not protect themselves.”

Javert shook his head helplessly. He wasn’t a policeman anymore, hadn’t been for years. And the years when he _was_ part of the police, he had simply… simply been protecting a series of unjust laws. He was incorrupt; he was irreproachable; he was unjust; he was unkind; he was self-righteous.

“It’s not all bad, you know,” Valjean told him, dark eyes meeting his in the mirror. “All that you’ve done had not been bad. You did not spend your entire life putting people in jail when they should not be. How many months did you spend trying to capture the Patron-Minette? How many years did you spend chasing down murderers, beasts who _should_ be locked behind bars so they would not end up hurting those who simply wished to live the best life they could?”

“I…” Javert swallowed. He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“You’re a policeman,” Valjean continued, thumb brushing over his mouth. Javert closed his teeth over it, sucking on instinct, and he could feel Valjean’s breath hitch even through the layers of cloth that separated his back from that strong chest. “You protected people.

“These scars…” And now, back to the bullet wounds he received years ago in the gardens of this very house. “You took them for Marius. You almost died, because you were protecting a boy whom you barely even cared for.”

Javert wanted to close his eyes, but Valjean had told him not to. So he could only avert them, staring into the flickering flames from the candles. “It was my duty,” he said helplessly.

“So it was,” Valjean agreed, lips curving up into a smile. “You’ve always done your duty. No, Javert – you’ve gone beyond your duty, over and over. To protect those who could not protect themselves.”

_You’ve done your duty, nothing more_ , Valjean had once said. And now, his words were completely different.

How things had changed. Yet those words still haunted Javert, and he shook his head.

“I’ve hurt so many,” he whispered, the words rushing out of him like a confession. “What right do I have to even think of myself as a policeman? Especially now that I… I do not have a badge.”

“It is not a badge that makes a policeman, I think,” Valjean refuted. His hand had shifted back down Javert’s cock, slowly stroking him through his jeans. Javert groaned again, turning his head and biting his sleeve, body jerking hard enough to make the wardrobe’s door shake.

“You’ve been helping the Palais with their cases for years,” Valjean continued, still stroking. “Does that not make you a policeman still?”

“I don’t know,” Javert said helplessly. His eyes remained open on sheer effort of will, drawn down to the way Valjean’s hand opened his fly, exposing the obscene wet patch at the front of his underwear; watched, unable to stop himself, as that hand closed over the head through the cloth, pumping it and making the cotton scrape over sensitive skin.

“Valjean,” he groaned, throwing his head back. A tongue slipped underneath the cloth on his neck, wetting it as Javert shivered, losing his words. 

“Please. Please, just… Just… Do something.”

“Do you want me to fuck you?” Valjean asked, almost contemplative if not for the unevenness of his voice.

“ _Yes_ ,” Javert hissed. He shook his head hard, somehow finding Valjean’s eyes in the mirror. He caught that gaze, caught the sight of himself: his lips spit-slick, his trousers hanging off his hips, his cock hard and leaking and peeking through Valjean’s thick fingers. “Please.”

“You have to tell me how,” Valjean said. His nail scraped down Javert’s cock.

Head dropping down, chin pressed to his chest, Javert tried to catch his breath, to think. “Like this,” he said, not even knowing what he was saying anymore. “Don’t… don’t stretch me open. Just take me like this. Let me feel you in the morning. Over the next few days, whenever I walk. Let me… let me have a reminder that I’m _yours_ whenever I take a step.”

Valjean’s exhale was heavy and thick with desire in Javert’s ear. His fingers squeezed Javert’s cock through the underwear, and Javert shook as he heard his throat make a loud, needy cry.

Lips brushed over his shoulder, nudged his shirt away to bite down lightly on the curve of his shoulder.

“Are you sure?”

Javert shook his head. Nodded. “Fuck me,” he begged, already beyond reason.

“No,” Valjean said, and Javert almost sobbed at the refusal. He tried to breathe through his teeth, to calm himself, but Valjean was already splaying his other hand over Javert’s chest, thumb brushing over the scars.

“I’m not going to fuck you. This isn’t going to be fucking, Javert.” Valjean kissed against his jaw. “I’m going to make love to you. Is that alright?”

What was the difference? Javert still wasn’t sure. But he wanted Valjean inside him; wanted to be taken and claimed and owned, and so he was nodding before he could even try to think.

Valjean nudged his head towards him, and Javert’s mouth opened as he was kissed deeply, hungrily, tongue darting into his mouth to stroke over his teeth. He spread his legs a little wider, trying to hold onto the top of the wardrobe even as he thrust his hips backwards.

“Hold on,” Valjean said. “Just… just stay there.”

What else was he supposed to do? Javert nodded, finally letting his body sag, head dropping between his raised shoulders as Valjean’s warmth pulled away from him and uneven footsteps headed for the bathroom.

It took almost too long – yet not long enough for him to catch his breath – before Valjean’s chest was pressed against his back again. Javert heard the sound of a belt buckle being pulled loose, metal clanking loud in the room, the only sound aside from their staccato, harsh breathing. He felt his own trousers and underwear being pulled down; saw out of the corner of his eye as they fell to his ankles.

And then he was clenching his hands tight against the wood, half-lifting to his toes as Valjean’s hands closed over his hips and his cock started to slide within him. Javert pressed his forehead against the cold glass, swallowing back a sob as his entrance was opened, straining and burning with the stretch.

But they had done this before, dozens and perhaps hundreds of times. His body had already learned Valjean’s girth, and though the ache remained, it slowly faded as Valjean seated himself inside him.

“Look at you,” Valjean whispered into his ear. Hands shifted from his hips to under his arms, and Javert found himself pulled backwards, nearly bringing the door with him until he remembered to bend his elbow.

He looked. Into Valjean’s eyes, so dark right above his own shoulder. To the sight of himself, flush spread down to his chest, the red of his skin stark against the white-grey of his hair and Valjean’s still-dark beard. He watched as his own mouth opened and he moaned as Valjean drew out slightly and thrust back inside.

“You’re beautiful,” Valjean told him. Javert tried to shake his head, to deny it – he looked obscene; he looked ridiculous, a man his age so consumed by desire – but Valjean’s hand had returned to his cock, and any protest he could think to make was lost in another groan.

“The way you open up for me, the way you give yourself to me…” Valjean was saying, his voice warm and intimate, words seeping into Javert’s lungs and colouring the insides with every word, every breath. “Look at you. Your eyes are so dark now. The red on your skin. Your _mouth_.” A thumb stroked over it, and Javert took it inside, cheeks hollowing as he sucked.

Valjean’s hips jerked, cock brushing against Javert’s prostate. And Javert made a strangled sound, half-muffled by the thumb between his lips, and he rocked backwards, wanting and wanting.

“God, Javert…” Valjean breathed, and he started to slowly fuck into him as he kissed from one side of Javert’s shoulders to another. “Do you still not believe me? Do you not see the broadness of your shoulders, the slimness of your waist?” He thrust again, hard enough to lift Javert up to the balls of his legs. 

“The strength of your legs?”

Javert watched. He watched as his calf muscles strained and the bones of his feet stood out as they tried to take on his full weight. 

“You have no idea how many people look at you when you walk down the streets, do you?” Valjean said, breathless but words still clear, still coherent. Which, Javert thought fuzzily, was patently _unfair_.

“There are so many who turn their eyes to you as you walk by. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a strong jaw,” fingers brushed over it, running through the rough beard, “and that mouth… God, Javert, your mouth could tempt any man or woman to sin. Especially when you open it like this,” the thumb pressed deeper, knuckles pressing against Javert’s nose, “so easily. So willingly.”

“I—” Javert tried to say. But his voice was choked in his throat with too much want, too much need, and he could only shake his head, swallowing around the thumb resting between his teeth. “I’m not. You’re biased.”

Valjean chuckled, the sound rumbling in his chest hard to be felt right against Javert’s back. “Maybe I am,” he said, thumb tracing Javert’s lips, slicking them even further until they gleamed obscenely under the candlelight. “But you’re beautiful to me, nonetheless.”

He shook his head. But Valjean thrust hard again, pressing against Javert as he rocked his hips. His cock stroked so inexorably over Javert’s prostate, sending stars bursting behind his eyes, and whatever he wanted to say was lost in his desperate gasp.

“It’s more than just your body that’s beautiful to me, you know,” Valjean continued, his words punctuated by the rhythmic thrust of his cock into Javert. “The wounds here,” his hand brushed over Javert’s chest, right over his rapidly-beating heart, “that have healed – not wholly, but healed, somehow, because of your own will. Of your own determination.”

“Because of _you_ ,” Javert corrected breathlessly. His hands were clenching and unclenching against the wardrobe door, and it was shaking on its hinges nearly enough to make him fall forward. Would have, if not for Valjean’s steadying arm around his waist.

They were a sight: Javert trembling and debauched, lips swollen by how much he bit them, his mouth hanging open with every breath, his cock hanging heavy between his legs with his balls drawing up. And Valjean’s arm around his waist, Valjean’s fingers curled around his cock, smearing the mirror with every thrust forward.

“Not just because of me,” Valjean said, his teeth sinking lightly into Javert’s shoulder. “Your own _strength_ , Javert. Your dedication, your devotion, to everything that you believe in, to everything you allowed into your heart... You give so willing, so utterly…”

“Only to you,” Javert said, throwing his head back as Valjean’s teeth caught the strip of cloth around his neck and tugged at it. “Just to you.”

“So let me tell you what that means to me,” Valjean said. He nosed Javert’s hair, dark eyes fixing upon his on the mirror as Javert felt the curve of his lips against his own skin.

“Your eyes. The way they fix upon me. The way you looked on the stands, years ago, giving your testimony for my sake…” His hand stroked harder, and Javert swallowed back his own cry, shaking in Valjean’s arms as he tried to focus, to listen.

“Whenever I feel the darkness encroaching, whenever I look at myself and see the scars there, I remember the look in your eyes when you stood there on the stands for my sake. Your eyes burning with devotion. For justice. For _me_.” Valjean’s hips stuttered, just slightly, and Javert bit down on his own lip hard enough to split the skin, blood spilling down to his chin.

Valjean buried his face into Javert’s shoulder, muffling a strangled sound against his skin. Javert rocked back, exerting all of his will to keep his hands on wood instead of moving towards skin.

“I wanted to give you words,” Valjean said, sounding hoarse. “But I can’t… I can’t even think of any that would be enough to tell you what that means to me.”

“It’s nothing more than what you-” Javert’s breath hitched as Valjean started to rock inside him again, cock nudging his prostate with every move. He licked his lips, tasting metal and red, before he tried again.

“Nothing more than what you deserve.”

“You helped me realise that,” Valjean said. His mouth pepped kisses on Javert’s neck – above the cloth, below it, beneath it. “You. You saw the worst of me, more than any other, and yet you stood there, fighting for me, meaning every word.”

Javert wanted to remind him that he never lied, but it was impossible to when Valjean pulled him closer, driving into him deeper. He cried out instead, trying to move back as much as he could, eyes fixed to Valjean’s in the mirror.

“No one knows me as you do. No one has more reason to despise me, hate me, as you do. And yet you…”

“I can’t hate you,” Javert said helplessly, not even aware anymore of the words spilling from his lips. He knew only Valjean’s, every single syllable of it sinking through his skin and twining around his bones. “Once I knew you, once I saw you, I could never- never hate you.”

Valjean’s arm left his wrist. Before Javert could fall forward and possibly bang his face against the mirror gracelessly, Valjean caught him by the hair. Javert turned, opened his mouth as their lips crashed together. He took Valjean’s mouth, breathing in his exhale, the remnants of those words lingering sweet on his tongue, and shuddered.

“Will you say it for me?” Valjean asked him breathlessly. “Will you now, Javert?”

Javert could no longer keep his eyes open. He let them fall close, slumping into Valjean’s arms as he was pressed into even deeper, Valjean’s hips pressing flush against his.

“I love you,” he said, words that had been locked within him for years finally being released. “I love you, Valjean. I love you, and I’m yours.”

“And I love you,” Valjean said. Javert gasped, breathlessly, as Valjean’s cock stroked inside him with the shudder of his hips. “Faith in myself, hope for the future, and love… So much love.”

Javert could only nod, no longer coherent enough to form words. He could only pant in Valjean’s mouth as he was kissed again, and let himself be moved. Valjean’s hand laid over his as he placed them on the side of the wardrobe door, the other flattened beside the mirror. Javert fell forward, the hinges creaking as the door shook, threatening to fall off. 

But he could not even care about it, not when Valjean was linking their fingers together, his other arm curling once more around his waist, fingers wrapping around his cock.

“Open your eyes,” Valjean murmured. Javert gritted his teeth, and forced himself to do so.

Valjean took him like this, deep and hard, every thrust shoving Javert’s cock forward and making the door shake. Javert felt himself flushing even harder as their obscene, wet sounds of every thrust echoed in his ears; as he heard his own stuttering cry at every thrust; as the sound of Valjean’s harsh pants filled his ears.

Then Valjean’s hand left his wrist. Fingers scrabbled at his neck, and Javert choked as he felt the knot loosened. His breathing wrecked itself like a ship upon a cliff as the cloth slid off, but Valjean’s hand closed around his neck and _squeezed_.

He came without even knowing he was approaching the edge, body throwing forward, arms shaking as he fought to keep them still. His body clenched around Valjean’s cock inside him, and for one moment, he could feel every curve and vein of it pressing against his oversensitive walls. He choked back a cry, shoving himself backwards blindly, and he heard Valjean’s strangled sob as he shoved in, burying himself entirely inside Javert before he came hard.

They stood there, leaning against the wardrobe door, before Javert’s knees buckled. Valjean held him as they crumpled to sit, and Javert groaned against at the feel of Valjean’s softening cock shifting inside him. He shivered just once more as Valjean pulled out, and clawed at strong shoulders and arms as Valjean pulled him close, pressing kisses to his hair.

Then there was an ominous creak. Javert opened his eyes, watching the metal of the hinges give in, before he closed them again when the door fell backwards, the top of it smacking loud against the floorboards. The bottom hinge still seemed fine.

Valjean’s shoulders were shaking. It took Javert a dizzying moment to recognise the sound: the quiet, now-familiar wheezing that was Valjean laughing too hard to even breathe. He moved, slipping a hand to the back of Valjean’s neck, brushing his thumb over the knobs of spine before he tugged Valjean’s head down and kissed him.

“The weight of two grown men was clearly too much for it,” he said, just a little dryly.

“Clearly,” Valjean agreed. Javert smiled tiredly as Valjean buried his face into his shoulder, wrapping his arms around those broad shoulders as Valjean continued to wheeze. He brushed his lips against a temple, tasting salt, before his thumb slid over the spot to wipe off the blood that his split lip caused.

Looking up, Valjean’s brows furrowed when he saw the blood. His knuckles swiped lightly at the lip before he kissed him – gentle, but still deep, and Javert shuddered slightly as he felt those rough calluses over the still-sensitive skin of his hip.

“Do you have more words now?” Valjean asked.

Javert hesitated. He looked at Valjean’s hand, plucking the strip of cloth that was still tangled amongst his fingers.

It looked filthy now: wet at some places with spit, the others with sweat. But it was no longer on his neck.

There was nothing on his neck, but he could still breathe.

After a moment, he shook his head. “None that fit as well as _yours_ ,” he said, closing his eyes.

Valjean’s fingers brushed his jaw, tugging his head close. Javert’s breath hitched, and he looked at Valjean for a moment before those lips met his again.

“We have time,” Valjean told him quietly. “We have years ahead of us, Javert. There will be plenty of time for me to help you believe in it, and you will.”

Javert looked at him. It was difficult to believe.

“You _will_ ,” Valjean repeated, his voice this time more determined than before.

“I cannot believe in myself,” Javert admitted, shoulders slumping as he let himself fall forward, forehead resting against Valjean’s. “But I can believe in you.”

“Believe in me then,” Valjean told him, stroking fingertips from Javert’s cheek to his temple before burying themselves in his hair. “Believe in me until the day you can believe in yourself.”

“One day,” he echoed, wanting to please Valjean even though he still did not know if that day would ever come. 

But there was such warmth and confidence in Valjean’s voice. But Valjean had always done what should be impossible; had changed a man who had thought himself to never be able to change.

When Valjean kissed him again, he let himself be surrounded by that heat, by the strength. Every step he took forward seemed to threaten to drag him backwards again, but… But Valjean would catch him. Catch him and hold him, like the safe harbour he had somehow become throughout these years.

If Javert could believe in nothing else, he could believe in Jean Valjean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn’t I say in Book III Chapter Five/Chapter 17 that my original outline is that Javert tops? _This_ is how things end up. I just… What is having control over my own writing? I don’t know such a thing.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The sacred simplicity of you at my side.” Valjean goes, and Javert follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **Epilogue Two: Sacred Simplicity (Nineteen, 2154)**   
> 
> 
> **Warnings:** Sap, happy ending, massive sadness (not really angst, but grief), character deaths, and explicit depiction of characters dealing with deaths of their loved ones … No, I’m not contradictory. Oh, and POV changes.  
>  **Notes:** Title and summary stolen from _Eric’s Song_ by Vienna Teng.

The year was 2153, and Jean Valjean knew he was dying.

It was not something he regretted; he was an old man now at seventy-three. He had lived a full life, and though he knew that there were many amongst those he loved who would argue that it was not nearly long enough, or that there had been too much suffering, he was happy with having had what he did.

For the last nineteen years he had lived as a free man, acknowledged by all by his true name. Though his left leg still dragged behind him, it was more of an old wound than a constant reminder by now. Nearly forty years had passed since the shackles were taken from him and he had not returned to prison since; the memories had faded.

And even without that, he had been happy. He had raised a child and had the pleasure of hearing her call him ‘Papa’; he watched her grow, gave her away at her wedding; and watched as she had children of her own who called him ‘Grandpapa’. He had watched, heart too full for words, as she found her place in the world, a strong woman who no longer needed an old man’s protection but wanted his presence anyway. He had found himself with a son, a boy he once feared would take everything from him but had instead given him so much; a boy who was now a man who stood at the forefront of society, doling out justice with a fair and merciful hand. He watched the world turn, slowly but inexorably; had watched the country change for the better and was glad to have a hand, no matter how small, in it.

“Don’t fall back asleep on me now, old man.”

Valjean smiled a little, opening his eyes. His vision was not as clear as it had been years ago, but Javert’s form had been familiar to him all of his life, and terribly dear these past two decades. The collar was long gone, and he stood there with his back straight even while leaning against the doorframe. His eyes, a pale blue shade Valjean had never found the perfect words for, were darkened and creased at the corners with worry.

Javert walked over to the bed. Valjean leaned against him as an arm wrapped around his shoulders and lifted him to sit up. Lips pressed into his temple, and Valjean turned his head when Javert removed the oxygen mask helping him breathe. He kissed Javert at the corner of his mouth, raising a hand to stroke lightly over the planes of his face.

His strength had faded slowly as he aged, then with a speed that surprised Valjean himself when he broke his hip last year. He knew that his end was coming for him then; knew it and tried to prepare for it quietly. He had not wished to make anyone worry.

But Javert had known him too well. He had quit his job at the police academy almost immediately after his fall to care for Valjean despite Valjean’s own protests: Javert was still healthy, almost incredibly so, despite that his hair was now full white instead of grey, and his face was etched with heavy lines. Not only from frowning, not anymore: from laughter and joy as well.

Seventy-three years Valjean had lived, and for most of those he had known Javert. He had him by his side through the last two decades. He had watched him heal; watched him smile and laugh; watched as he found himself; watched as he fought for justice with a ferocity surely matched only by the archangel Michel himself. Throughout it all, Javert’s love for him had never faded, but seemed to grow stronger with every year, his devotion becoming a rock that anchored Valjean as the world turned and changed.

If he had nothing else but this, Valjean would consider himself the most fortunate man in the world.

“I’m not asleep,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to Javert’s palm when it cupped his cheek. He dragged more strength from within himself to smile, thumb stroking over Javert’s cheekbone. “Are they here?”

“Crowding into the living room,” Javert said, the barest note of irritation in his voice. “Told you that we should’ve gotten a bigger house at _some_ point.”

Valjean’s shoulders shook a little as he laughed. They were still living in the house on Rue Plumet, and perhaps it was simply a sign of old age, but Valjean never had any wish to move. Even as their family grew as their daughters and sons had their children, even as their number of visitors expanded as they had more friends, this was their home.

“You can chase them all out into the garden,” he pointed out. “It’s more than big enough.”

“And have the children step on all of your flowers?” Javert snorted. “Like hell I would.”

There was a moment of silence as Valjean’s eyes slid shut involuntarily. He was tired; he always was, these days, despite his best efforts. He felt Javert’s lips on his jaw, and he shifted slightly, turning in the other man’s arms to kiss him on the mouth.

Javert did not lean against him, not now that Valjean could no longer hold his weight, but he did return the kiss. After only a moment, Valjean found himself dizzied from the lack of air. Before he could pull away, however, Javert was already breaking the contact of their lips. Their foreheads touched, and Javert sighed.

“Are you sure you’re up to seeing all of them?” he asked quietly. “I can send them all away if you’re too tired.”

Valjean shook his head. “I’m up to it,” he said. He did not say that he knew that if he did not do so today, he never would again.

Perhaps it was his faith. Perhaps it was the Bishop’s light, still guiding him after all these long years. But Valjean felt the touch of death on his shoulders today, and though he knew he would go willingly, he was selfish enough to want to see all whom he loved first.

Javert nodded. His hand shifted to Valjean’s cheek, down to his neck, and over his chest. The brand had faded after long years, and he knew it was not what Javert sought. It was a little strange, really, but Javert had grown into a habit of feeling his heartbeat ever since last year, placing his fingers on Valjean’s chest, his neck, or his wrist every once in a while.

As if he was checking that Valjean was still alive.

“I’ll call them then,” Javert said.

Nodding, Valjean leaned against the strong arm around his shoulders. He heard Javert raise the bed and rested against it. When the warmth left him, he sighed, letting his eyes fall back shut again. He focused on the sound of Javert’s footsteps, then the sound of rising voices from outside the bedroom as the door opened, to keep himself awake.

Small running feet.

“If you jump on him, I’ll hang you on a tree branch,” Javert’s voice threatened.

“I know better than that!”

Valjean opened his eyes again. The wide, dark ones of his oldest grandchild met his, and Jeanne Éponine grinned. At twelve, she resembled her mother almost entirely. Except that she had none of Cosette’s grace and all of Marius’s clumsiness, because her elbows slipped from Valjean’s bed at the next moment. She yelped, and flailed slightly.

Javert was behind her in an instant, grabbing her by the collar like a wolf with a recalcitrant cub. She turned towards him, glaring with all the ferocity a twelve-year-old was capable of even as she found her own footing.

“Uncle Javert, I’m too old for this!” she pouted, then turned to him. “Tell him, Grandpapa!”

Smiling, Valjean shook his head. He would never get into an argument between the girl and Javert, not even when she was still a toddler.

“ _I’m_ not too old for this,” Javert told her grimly. He manhandled her into a chair. When she scowled at him, her lower lip sticking even more out, he rolled his eyes. “Sit there and stop being a brat, brat.”

“She’s not a brat at home, you know,” Cosette’s voice said from the door. “Only here.”

Their second child, far more sedate, headed straight for his namesake. Michel Georges clung immediately to Javert's leg, huge dark eyes rising before he grinned, showing a missing tooth.

“It’s not my fault that Valjean spoils her,” Javert told Cosette even as he ruffled the boy’s hair.

Michel toddled over to Valjean’s bed, climbing up with far more grace than his older sister until he was sitting on the edge. He smiled even wider when Valjean looked at him.

“Mama said that you don’t feel very well, Grandpapa,” the boy said solemnly. “So we’re all here to make you feel better.”

Valjean remembered very well when Cosette first knew that she would be having a boy. Jeanne had already been named for Valjean, and while they wished to name him after Marius’s father, both she and Marius decided that they would not burden their children with the names of the dead as their first names. Somehow, they decided that they wanted to name him after Javert.

The only problem was that Javert did not have a first name. Not any that he would like to claim to. And the man had told them, scowling ferociously: “If you name _any_ child ‘Javert’, much less any variation of ‘Riezo’, I will shoot you both. I really mean that.”

So they named him ‘Michel’, from an old comparison Valjean had once made and which had stuck onto Javert like a bur. Javert rolled his eyes when the decision was made, but he didn’t protest, because “it’s a decent enough name for a kid.”

Marius had pulled up a chair beside the bed, and Cosette flashed a sweet smile to her husband as she sat down. She leaned over, kissing Valjean on the cheek. “You look well, Papa,” she said, and Valjean smiled at her for the lie.

“Don’t leave me out!” a small voice cried. And Valjean laughed a little as he watched little hands waved above the side of the bed. Marius grinned, and he reached down and picked up his youngest child, little Gabrielle Fantine, and dropped her on the bed.

All of four years old, she was an adorable little thing with Cosette’s cheekbones and eyes. There was a crease between her little brows, and she stared at Valjean for a moment more before declaring, “Mama was right. You’re not well, Grandpapa,” and kissed him messily on the cheek.

Valjean reached out and ruffled her mess of curls, so much like her namesake’s. She squeaked before grabbing Valjean by the wrist, clinging onto his arm. On Valjean’s other side, Michel frowned, and did the same to his other arm. Jeanne looked at her younger siblings, conflict clear in her eyes, before she scrambled up the bed and practically flattened herself on top of Valjean’s legs, claiming her territory.

“Now you’re trapped,” Javert said, sounding unaccountably amused. “All these years, and it’s a bunch of kids who captured you.”

“We’re not capturing him,” Michel said, carefully pronouncing the third word. “We are making him feel better.”

“As long as you don’t weigh on him too much,” Marius said. He had pulled out another chair beside his wife, taking her hand in his as they looked fondly at their children. His smile twisted down at the edges, growing sorrowful, as he turned to Valjean.

“You really do look well, Papa,” Marius said, using the name he had used for Valjean ever since he and Cosette married.

Valjean smiled. His son was even worse a liar than his daughter, and he shook his head. “It’s fine,” he told them.

He looked at them more carefully. There were deep creases of worry in the corners of Marius’s eyes, but even more than that, there were dark circles beneath them. Valjean wondered if it was a particular case in the Cour de Cassation that worried him so – Marius had taken over as Monsieur le Président five years ago with the intention of turning the court into an instrument of changing laws – or if it was something else.

Cosette looked tired as well, and her eyes were red-rimmed. She shook her head when Valjean glanced at her, rubbing her hand over her eyes a little.

“It’s nothing, Papa,” she told him. “Please don’t worry about us.”

Valjean wanted to ask more. He might be old and his strength had faded, but they were still his children, and what father could help but worry about his children, even if he was in his deathbed?

“Don’t work too hard, alright?” he whispered. Not only to Marius, but to Cosette as well: she was in charge of a large organisation handling charities much like the shelter that Valjean had once worked at, for, she had said, if Marius was to be in the law court ensuring that the laws passed were fair, then her place was to make sure that the undeserving would not ever end up in those courts in the first place.

They had both grown up well, and Valjean was immeasurably proud that this elegant, passionate woman and this stately, eloquent man found it within themselves to call him ‘Papa’.

She nodded, removing the glasses she still wore to wipe at her eyes again. Somehow, she managed to wrestle his hand from Gabrielle’s grip – eliciting a whine from her which was staved off when Marius distracted the little girl with a bop on the nose – and clenched tightly on it.

“Please don’t go,” she whispered, pressing his hand to her forehead. “Papa, we still need you here.”

Of course she would know, Valjean realised. His smile turned a little sorrowful at the edges, and he shifted his hand so he brushed her on the cheek. Out of the corner of the eyes, he saw Javert leave the room.

“I’ve had a long time with you,” he told his daughter gently. “A very long time. Far more than I deserved, but which God found it within His mercy to give me.”

“Not enough,” Cosette said, clinging onto him tighter. “I don’t… Papa, it’s not enough. It will never be enough.”

“Shhh,” he hushed her gently, reaching over with his other hand. Michel – always the most perceptive of the three siblings – had let go, and was sitting quietly watching the scene. Valjean gave him a smile before he stroked his hand over Cosette’s hair, as if she was an eight-years-old girl afraid of the dark again instead of the fearless thirty-five year old woman with children of her own.

“I’m very tired, Cosette,” he told her what he could not bear to tell Javert. “I’ve been given so much, and I’m terribly happy. But I’m tired.”

Cosette sobbed. She shook her head, again and again, before she flung herself on the bed and hugged him tight.

Valjean turned to Marius for help, but the young man – not so young anymore, for he was over forty now, and oh how the years had passed so quickly – was not looking at him. He was gently corralling his children off of the bed, retreating a little to give his wife space with her father.

“Papa, papa,” Cosette sobbed. “I can’t… I can’t…”

“You’re strong,” Valjean told her, because that was the truth and he believed in it with all his heart. “This is a storm you can weather.”

“But _you_ should be able to live forever,” Cosette said. Valjean smiled helplessly, because here she was again, his sweet little girl, the first person in the world who taught him how to love.

He cupped her cheek, and pulled some strength from whatever reserves he had to kiss her on her forehead. She trembled, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close until she practically fell onto the bed with him, holding onto him tightly as if she was afraid he would fade the moment she let go.

“All parents must pass before their children, Cosette,” he whispered to her. “And God takes us all in our time. He brings us to His garden, and there we watch and wait for those we love.”

Cosette hiccupped. She yanked off her glasses, rubbing hard at her eyes. The metal and plastic clattered to the floor and she ignored it entirely, burying her face into his shoulder.

“You will wait, Papa?” she asked. “You will wait, and I will see you again?”

Valjean chuckled, turning his head to kiss her hair. “Of course you will, Cosette,” he told her. “Of course you will.”

She looked at him for a long moment, dark eyes wet and bright. But it seemed that she found what she sought, for she nodded. Pulling away, she picked up her glasses, polishing them with the hem of her dress before she wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

“I still…” she swallowed hard. “Papa… I will miss you. I will always miss you.”

Reaching out, Valjean took her hand. He squeezed it with as much strength as he could muster, and Cosette’s eyes welled up again.

“Do not forget to live,” he told her. “Live, and be happy. That will bring me more joy than any tears, my child.”

Cosette ducked her head. Her shoulders shook for a moment before she leaned in and kissed his forehead. Her tears slipped down Valjean’s cheek, and she wiped it away with a shaky hand.

“I’ll be happy,” Cosette said. “Whenever I’m happy, Papa, I’ll think of you.”

“That’s all I want,” Valjean told her.

She swallowed again before stepping back, turning towards Marius. She plucked little Gabrielle from her husband’s lap, and tugged Michel towards her. Jeanne went on her own, her young eyes wide and solemn. Out of all of them, she knew Valjean best, and she knew what was going on.

But she did not cry. Not even solemn, kind Michel cried. They surrounded their mother, hugging every part of her they could reach, as if their touch could give her strength. Gabrielle did not understand, confusion writ over every inch of her features, but she knew her mother was sad.

Cosette clung to her children, her tears starting once more. Valjean closed his eyes, trying to take a steadying breath. Despite all he said, to leave them seemed to hurt far more than his own failing body.

“Papa,” Marius said. Valjean looked at him, and the man – so established, so respected – seemed to turn back into the uncertain boy Valjean had met at the barricades.

“I’ve never known my father,” Marius told him, his eyes not meeting Valjean’s as he took his hand. “But you… you have been like a father to me. You have been…”

He lifted his head. His eyes, too, were wet, and his hand was clenching almost too tight over Valjean’s. “You have been the best father I have ever known. And I… I am…” He choked, unable to continue.

Valjean knew this man. He had watched him grow too, and find his place in the world. He had watched every single one of Marius’s speeches in court; he had been there during Marius’s appointment ceremony as Monsieur le Président of the Cour de Cassation. During all of these occasions, he had been so eloquent, speaking with logic and passion about the changes he wished to see in their country, in the world.

Yet now he seemed to be at a loss. Valjean tugged at him, raising himself until he could wrap his arms around Marius’s bent body, embracing the man he had quietly thought of as his own son for so long.

“It’s alright, Marius,” he soothed, running a hand down Marius’s back. “You honour me by calling me father, and I…” he pulled back a little, meeting those dark eyes, the light in them never changing through these two decades despite the new lines.

“I am very proud to call you my son. And if I meet M. Georges Pontmercy where I am going, I am certain that he will say that same.”

Marius choked. He bent even lower, his shoulders shaking. He clutched onto Valjean’s hand now, wreaked with silent sobs as tears fell from his squeezed-shut eyes.

Valjean did not speak. He simply continued to run his hand down Marius’s back, soothing him gently as the man cried. Though his heart grieved at the pain he was causing to those he loved so, a terribly selfish part of him could not help but rejoice.

For he was a lucky man, far luckier than he deserved, to have his love returned so strongly and by so many.

After long minutes, Marius seemed to regain control over himself. He sniffed once more before pulling away, rubbing his sleeve over his eyes. His smile to Valjean was watery but real.

“Thank you, Papa,” he said shakily. He took a deep breath, clutching both hands over Valjean’s now-weak one, and pressed it to his forehead. “ _Thank you_.”

“There are no thanks needed,” Valjean said gently. When Marius started to shake his head, he tugged slightly. “Come down here.”

Marius’s legs folded immediately. He looked up at Valjean, and Valjean smiled at him, cupping his cheek as he leaned close and pressed a kiss to his hair almost exactly like the one he gave to Cosette.

“You took care of my daughter, and gave her happiness,” he whispered. “You fought for my freedom. You looked upon me and called me father. No, Marius, you have nothing you need to thank me for.”

Making a strangled sob, Marius clutched once more at his hand. He shuddered hard, just once, before he met Valjean’s eyes. His gaze was bright with tears and sorrow, but with so much love that Valjean felt his old heart expand even further.

“Papa,” Marius said. He squeezed Valjean’s hand again. When Valjean nodded, he stood, a little shaky.

He watched as Marius went back to his wife and embraced her. Their foreheads met for a moment, their eyes shut, and Valjean marvelled at the sight of them. They fell in love in a single moment, but their love had lasted, and grown stronger, throughout these years. They brought each other so much happiness that it made his own eyes wet to watch them.

They stood in tandem, gathering their children around them. Cosette turned away from her husband, her eyes meeting Valjean’s. When he nodded, she bit her lip, and led her family out of the room.

Valjean watched them go. When the door closed behind them, he dropped back against the bed, sighing a little.

Familiar footsteps approached. He turned immediately when Javert’s fingers stroked over his face, wiping away his tears. He pressed a kiss to a thumb, opening his eyes to meet Javert’s. There was more pain etched at the edges now than before, and Valjean reached out.

Before he could try to soothe the pain away, Javert caught his hand. He kissed Valjean’s knuckles again.

“Don’t you dare apologise,” he said. Leaning down, he kissed Valjean hard on the mouth.

“I wasn’t going to,” Valjean said when he could once more. “I only…”

Javert shook his head. He placed a finger over Valjean’s lips. “Don’t,” he said, and there was a thickness to his voice that was not there before. Not during these months as Valjean had grown weaker and weaker. “Just… don’t say goodbye.”

He blinked. _Why_ , he wanted to ask, but there was desperation in Javert’s eyes that silenced him. So he nodded instead.

Taking a deep breath, Javert looked at him. “Mathieu and Azelma are outside,” he said. “Want me to let them in?”

Valjean nodded. They would be less trying, he knew; they had never really been _his_ , not like Cosette and Marius.

Despite what Javert sometimes still protested, despite what he seemed to think, those two had always belonged to him more.

Javert looked at him for a moment before he kissed him again, this time slow and lingering. “Alright,” he said.

They came in almost immediately after Javert left: Mathieu following Azelma, with their youngest daughter – nine-years-old Élise Therese – hiding behind her father’s leg, peeping out at Valjean. Nicolas Philippe, a proud creature even at eleven, followed behind his parents, watching Valjean from behind his dark curls and hooded eyes.

Valjean smiled at them, reaching out with a hand. Azelma took it, sitting on the chair Cosette had used, while Mathieu took Marius’s.

“Philippe couldn’t come,” he said abruptly once the silence became too thick and uncomfortable. “There’s been another crisis, and Hughes and Bressole are with him.”

He paused a moment. “And Tristan can’t really deal with it alone just yet.”

Tristan, Valjean knew, referred to Tristan Combeferre: the nephew of one of the schoolboys at the barricades so long ago. Mathieu had found him years ago through a blog post the boy made advocating solutions for social change, and had taken him to M. Philippe to be groomed to be his successor – a necessary thing, given that M. Philippe was now approaching the end of his second and final term as Président of the Republic of France.

It was not a term M. Philippe wished to take. But there was no one both willing and able to take up the position. The situation had been desperate five years ago at the end of M. Philippe’s first term: what else could it be, after all, when M. Philippe had asked Valjean himself _thrice_ to take up the position?

Now, however, that did not matter. His heart was saddened by the thought that he could not meet the young man who had, with all of their help, brought light to the country. But at the same time, he did not know M. Philippe well – he kept much to himself, letting only Mathieu and later Azelma in. Though Valjean had reached out a hand for aid, he suspected the wounds caused by over a decade of enforced isolation had done damage that was not for him to heal.

His heart ached too to know that he would not get to see the two boys he had watched grow into men, for though they had never been really his – they followed Mathieu, and then M. Philippe, like childhoods, and now serve as both guard and advisor to the latter, using all the skills and knowledge they have learned as childhood for the good of the country.

So he nodded slightly. His eyes remained on Mathieu’s as his lips curved into a smile.

“I’ve thanked you before for what you have done,” he said, reaching out. When Mathieu took his hand, he squeezed it.

“But let me thank you again,” he said. “You’ve given me my freedom. You’ve brought light to so many.” Not just with his strategies before, but now directly with his own teachings and with the long arm of the new Ministère de l'Éducation.

Mathieu shook his head hard. He took a deep breath once before he stood up, walking over to Valjean. His daughter looked a little confused at losing her steady post, and scuttled over to her mother.

Stopping right next to Valjean’s bed, Mathieu took a deep breath, seeming to gather his strength. As Valjean watched, a little confused, he leaned in and wrapped his arms around Valjean’s now weakened body.

“It’s me who has to thank you,” Mathieu told him, his voice tremulous with the force of emotions he had always kept leashed deep within. “Monsieur, you… you gave me _hope_ when I thought there was none left in the world. And whenever I lost it, I just had to look at you and…”

He shuddered hard for a moment before he fell silent.

Valjean hesitantly rested his hand on Mathieu’s elbow, not knowing what to say. While he scrambled for some words in his fogging mind, Azelma had walked over to the other side of the bed. She held him tightly as well, her arms crossing over her husband’s.

“What he means is: thank you,” she said, her voice unsteady as well. “For all you have done. For all you _are_.”

She pulled away slightly, looking at him through rapidly-blinking eyes. “Not just for the kindness you show to all, or what you showed to us. But…” She swallowed. “Thank you. For loving Javert.”

Instinctively, Valjean stilled. This was something he did not know how to respond to at all.

“There is…” his voice was surely too weak to be heard, as soft as it was. He swallowed, then tried again. “There is nothing to be thanked for that. To love, and to be loved in return is… it is a blessing I had never thought myself worthy of, and yet I was given it.”

Azelma blinked, shuddering for a moment. She nodded. Mathieu’s head had rested on Valjean’s shoulder for the past minutes, as if imprinting the feel of him onto his own skin, but he pulled away now.

“We’ll take care of Cosette and Marius,” Mathieu told him quietly, his hand squeezing Valjean’s. “We’ll make sure that they are not too caught up with their grief.”

Valjean nodded. “Thank you,” he said, hesitating for a moment. “Will you… will you help Javert as well? Give him something to do, at least, so he will not be stuck here in this empty house?”

Perhaps Javert could teach again, if not in the new police academy then in the many new schools Mathieu had built. Or, perhaps, he could help Azelma with her hospitals, the ones dedicated to helping survivors of abuse and trauma.

“We will,” Mathieu said.

Azelma’s head lowered, her shoulders starting to shake. Valjean reached out to her, brushing his fingers over her hand, trying to give her comfort and some strength – it would be difficult for her: Javert was a stubborn man, and Valjean knew that his grief over this would be great.

She made a tiny sob, but nodded as well. Her hand took his own, squeezing his fingers lightly.

They stayed like this, hands joined as if in pact. Valjean looked at them both, then at their children, both of whom looked confused at the show of grief. Surely understandable, Valjean thought wryly, for their parents rarely showed such emotion openly.

It was Mathieu who regained control over himself first. He reached over the bed, brushing his fingertips over his wife’s shoulder. Azelma nodded, wiping her tears.

“We’ll… we’ll miss you too, you know,” she told Valjean, biting her lip slightly.

“I’m honoured,” Valjean told her gently. He met Mathieu’s eyes, recognising the grief there that the man still could not seem to fully express, before he let go of their hands.

They exchanged a glance, volumes of words expressed in that moment, before they glanced at him once more. They took their children’s hands and left the room.

The sound of their departing echoed in Valjean’s ears as he slumped backwards. He was tired, incredibly so, and he knew now that the time he had left was not measured in days, but in minutes. The bed felt incredibly cold, the room immensely empty. Even the sound of the voices past the door, indecipherable to his fading hearing, could not disperse the notion.

He was so caught up in the faraway sounds that he started when the bed dipped. An arm wrapped around him, and Valjean sighed, going willingly as Javert pulled him close. Valjean rested there, leaning against a still-strong chest as Javert’s arm wrapped around his waist and their fingers tangled together.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that the door was closed. The young people with their lives ahead of them had been left outside, and here, in this room, there were only two old fools.

Javert’s lips brushed his jaw, gently. “What are you thinking about?” he asked quietly.

“The future, beyond that door,” Valjean told him. He turned his head, shifting a little. Javert understood without words, because he moved on the bed until Valjean could look at him in the eye.

“I’m going soon,” he told Javert, putting into words what they had avoided speaking about for months, perhaps years. He reached up, pressing a finger over Javert’s lips. “I need you to promise me something.”

There was a whole host of emotions in Javert’s eyes. But they were dry when he nodded.

“Be happy,” Valjean urged. “Please, be happy. Do not let grief consume you. You have time left, perhaps plenty of it, and I want… I want you to be happy for the rest of it that God has granted you.”

Javert took his hand, pressing it to his cheek as he kissed the palm. “For the time I have left,” he said, his voice thick with a thousand emotions Valjean was too tired to decipher. He could only look into those eyes, searching for sincerity.

But Javert did not lie. It was a habit he never managed to learn. Valjean knew he spoke the truth now; that he made a sincere promise. So he nodded, slumping back into Javert’s arms.

“I am very tired,” he whispered. “Will you hold me?”

Perhaps it was selfish, but Valjean would like to feel Javert’s arms around him as he went.

“Of course,” Javert said. Lips pressed against Valjean’s temple, and the hand in his tightened its grip. “I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

Valjean nodded. He let his eyes fall shut. He turned his head, resting his cheek against Javert’s shoulder. He could feel every breath Javert took; a steady, anchoring presence.

Slowly, he started to drift. The darkness was so close now.

He let out a sigh, and let himself begin to fall.

***

Javert held him. Held him and counted his breaths, his thumb against Valjean’s wrist, seeking for the pulse beneath the corded scars.

When he felt the breaths growing shallower and the beats slowing, he did not cry. What was the use of it, after all? Even if his tears and his rage could extend Valjean’s life, even if they could fight off hovering Death, it was surely too late.

God took everyone in their time, and Man would always think it too soon.

Valjean’s last breath was a deep sigh, as if he was releasing all of his burdens. His pulse slowed. It stopped. No matter how hard Javert pressed, no matter how frantically he searched, there was nothing left.

He closed his eyes. He swallowed. He held onto Valjean tighter, letting himself pretend, if only for moments more, that the body in his arms still held life.

Slowly, without even conscious thought, he started to pull away, standing up. He rested Valjean on the bed and lowered it once more. Like this, lying down, cheek pressed to the pillow with a small smile on his lips, Valjean still looked like he was asleep. Javert was a fool, for he found himself kissing him again, pressing his mouth against Valjean’s.

But there was no breath. No heat he could lock into his lungs and let feed the green growth in his chest.

Not anymore.

Automatically, like he had done for the past months, he took the blankets and pulled them up above Valjean’s shoulders. He cupped Valjean’s cheek.

_Just a little more_ , he thought. To himself or to Valjean, he was no longer sure. Something had shattered entirely within him the moment he felt Valjean’s last breath, and Javert could no longer feel anything.

His eyes were still dry as he opened the door, stepping out of the room. Cosette’s head jerked up immediately, but her question faded away the moment she looked at Javert’s face. Javert did not know his own expression, but Cosette burst into tears, turning her head and burying her face into Marius’s – not Pontmercy, not for years – chest.

“He’s gone, then,” Mathieu – not Frey either – asked dully.

Javert nodded. He had no more words.

Mathieu lowered his head. His hands reached for his children, pulling them towards him. Nicolas, always proud, looked mutinous, but his rebellion ceased the moment he realised that his father was crying. Élise looked unsure about what was going on, but she held onto her father and brother both.

Marius and Cosette were surrounded by their children, all of them in tears. Jeanne did not make a single sound as she sobbed, but her little body was shaking in it.

He should reach out for them, Javert knew. Offer comfort, somehow. But Javert could only stand there, feeling pieces of himself dying with every second.

It was Azelma who finally moved. She stood from her chair and crossed the room in the space of one second, flinging her arms around him.

“Don’t go,” she said, burying her face into his shoulder. “Please. Please, Monsieur. Please don’t go.”

Javert’s arms rose. They fell atop her shoulders, halfway to embracing her.

“I have to,” he heard himself say, not even able to feel his own throat work anymore. “I have always followed him. It has always been this way.”

Somehow, his quiet words reached the other three adults in the room. Their heads shot up, staring at him. He shook his head.

“I have to go,” he said again.

“No,” Cosette cried. “No. Not both of you. Not both of you at the same time.”

Azelma was weeping now, heaving sobs against his chest. She held onto him tightly. She had not cried like this at Thénardier’s death.

“Please don’t go,” she said, her voice a wreck. She looked up, trembling, at him. “Please. _Dad, please_.”

Javert’s head spun at the term. He tried to smile, but his face seemed to forget how to move. Slowly, he shook his head again. He watched, detached from his own body, as his hand cupped her face.

“You honour me with that title,” he whispered. “But I have to go. I…” He closed his eyes.

“I’m already dead.”

A year ago, when Valjean first had his fall, Javert realised something: Valjean would go first, and Javert would not be able to live without him. His heart was wood, green-cored and now grown into rich, full vines that reached into every part of him – and the roots, the soil in which it grew, was Valjean.

If Valjean died, so would Javert. It was selfish, terribly so, he knew that now in the face of the naked grief in front of him. Jeanne was staring at him with wide, betrayed eyes – too young to understand devotion that reached through every moment of life until it became the foundation of it, and old enough to understand death.

He should stay for them. He should help them through their grief.

But Javert was already dead. His soul had left him the moment he felt Valjean’s did.

Slowly, he pulled away from Azelma. She tried to hold onto him, but he was still stronger than her, despite his age. _This is how a mind kills a man_ , Javert thought. He had hated that he remained healthy, but now… now, it didn’t matter.

Taking her by the shoulders, he kissed her on the forehead.

“Bury us together,” he told her, knowing it was cruel but needing to be sure. “Please.”

Azelma made a sound that was almost inhuman. She fell to her knees. Javert wanted to comfort her, but his hand could only reach half the distance. It hovered there in the air, unable to cross the barrier between the living and the dead.

Mathieu had left his seat. He took his wife into his arms, trying to soothe with a hand down her back. His hand was trembling.

“Of course,” Azelma whispered, her voice destroyed by her weeping.

She lifted her eyes and met his. Whatever she saw there seemed to break something in her, but she was strong, for she held his gaze. “We will, Dad. No matter what, we won’t separate the two of you.”

Javert nodded. This was the last of his worries. The world tilted in front of him, grey creeping at the edges, and his own heart resounded loud in his ears.

No- no, there was one more thing.

“Take care of her,” he told Mathieu. He took a step back. “Take care of each other. Live out your lives in full. Don’t follow us too soon.”

Before they could reply, or even think to form words, Javert walked back into the bedroom. He closed the door behind him.

_The future_ , Valjean had said, and Javert wondered if he knew.

He hadn’t lied to Valjean; he told him that he would be happy for the rest of his life. But there was no life for him after Valjean’s death. Despite all that stood beyond this door he was leaning against, they were all too far away for him to reach.

His world had always been here, in the form of Jean Valjean. It was Valjean whose hands had rebuilt the foundations of his world when the old, rotting one had fallen. Now that Valjean was gone, it threatened to collapse again.

And Javert was too old, too tired, to rebuild it again.

Step by stuttering step, he walked back to the bed. Valjean still looked as if he was asleep. There were so many nights when Javert came home to find him like this, especially before he took up the job at the academy. If he pretended, if he lied to himself for just one more moment, then perhaps he could fool himself into thinking that it was one of those nights.

But Valjean’s body was already starting to cool when Javert slipped into the bed beside him. There was no breath. No heartbeat. Valjean was not drifting out of sleep. He would not turn around and kiss Javert a welcome home, and he never would again. The heartbeat that had anchored Javert to the world these past decades was gone forever.

The tears finally came. Javert closed his eyes and buried his face into the back of Valjean’s neck. He wrapped his arm around his waist. He reached into the pocket of his pants, finding the rosary; the same one Valjean had given him so long ago. His hand found Valjean’s, and he tangled their fingers, the rosary’s beads binding them together.

A foolish hope, perhaps, that it would allow God to let them stay together.

Javert let out a breath.

His heart was dead. His soul was gone. His mind had shattered. There was only his body left.

And a body was nothing in the face of a will, especially a will like Javert’s. He held onto Valjean tighter. At the edge of his vision, he could see the looming dark.

Valjean was his, and he was Valjean's. No chain connected them, not for long years. But one fact remained the same:

Wherever Valjean went, he would follow.

He followed him now, one last time.

***

It was only hours later that Cosette finally found the strength to approach the door. Azelma stood beside her, and they looked at each other.

They were the daughters of two men who had found everything within each other. They knew their fathers loved them and it was a love that ran deep and strong, but what they had with each other was something that was beyond words, beyond description. It was in their eyes as they looked at each other; in the turn of their bodies as they walked.

Cosette had never seen her father smile with absolute, unrestrained joy as he did when he was with Javert.

But such love was cruel too. Cosette had always known – and Azelma did too, she saw now – that if they lost one, then the other would follow soon after. They were tied up too tightly with each other, the sole constant for each other throughout their lives. First due to fate or God or both, then by their own choice.

She wiped her eyes again. Her lips curved upwards hesitantly, and, after a long moment, Azelma returned it. The shape of her mouth was filled with as much grief as Cosette felt.

They had left their husbands behind with their children. This was a task for two of them, the two daughters who chose their fathers despite blood, despite law. And they reached out for the doorknob in unison, turning it and stepping into the room.

Papa and Javert lay together on the bed, the blankets raised over their bodies. Cosette pulled down the cloth, and her breath caught in her throat as tears welled up once more in her eyes.

They were curled up, bodies fitting together as if they had long ago found all the ways and patterns they could fit their separate edges and pieces.

“I can almost pretend that they’re only sleeping,” Azelma whispered.

Cosette nodded. She found herself walking towards the bed. Glancing at Azelma again, two trembling hands reached out – Azelma’s to Javert’s neck, and Cosette’s to her own father.

There was no pulse. She did not expect there to be one. But she had… she had _hoped_.

Azelma made a choked sob. Her hand shuddered on Javert’s neck. Cosette looked at him – she had never seen him so peaceful. She had never seen this particular smile – small, but so full of love. Surely it was reserved only for her father.

“I’ve tried,” Azelma said, her voice a sudden shock in the room. Her fingers had moved from Javert’s neck to his fingers, trailing lightly over the beads of the rosary tangled there. “I’ve tried to believe. Dad never... he has never been as open about it as M. Jean, but… I knew he believed in a merciful God.”

Cosette rested her fingers over the other woman’s. They kept their hands there – over the rosary, over the cooling hands that used to be so warm, so strong.

“But how can I—” Azelma’s voice broke. She swallowed. “How can I when- when God takes them _both_ from us at the same time? A month apart, perhaps I could- I could- but the same _day_...”

She trembled, her hands coming up to cover her face. Cosette felt her own tears spill over, and she moved towards Azelma, towards her sister. She drew her arms around her, pulling her close, letting Azelma rest her face on her shoulder.

Once, a long time ago, Azelma had done the same thing for her. It was when Cosette had made the foolish decision of visiting in prison the man whom she refused to acknowledge in any way to be her father. Azelma came with her then, and when Cosette stepped out of the prison gates, she had drawn her into her arms and allowed her to cry her anger, frustration, and horror out onto her shoulder.

“Maybe God is merciful still,” she said, fighting with every inch of her will to keep her voice steady. “For we will now not have to see Javert fade slowly, inch by inch, day by day.” She tightened her embrace, pressing a kiss to Azelma’s hair as she shook her head.

“Perhaps,” her voice cracked. She swallowed down her tears, and continued. “Perhaps He is merciful, for he made sure that they are never to be parted.”

“Never,” Azelma echoed, her voice barely coherent from the tears. She sniffed hard, her hand clenching on Cosette’s shoulder.

“The same coffin,” she said, shaky but sure. “The same spot.”

“The same tombstone,” Cosette agreed. “But two different inscriptions.”

Cosette wanted to remain strong, but they were planning their fathers’ funerals. For the ones who had saved them and kept them safe, and were now gone.

She made a wretched sob.

“We’ll see them again one day,” she said, finally wrenching off her glasses and lean fully against Azelma. “Papa said. He promised.”

It was poor comfort, she knew. Neither of them would die for a long time, and they would not wish to. They had their husbands, their children; they had their purpose, their causes. They were grown women both, and they could not abandon all to follow their fathers no matter how much their very souls ached for missing them.

“One day,” Azelma echoed, hollow-voiced. After a moment, she seemed to find some hidden reservoir of strength, pulling back. She stroked Cosette’s hair, and Cosette clasped onto her hand as it cupped her face.

“When we see them,” Azelma said, “we’ll have plenty to tell, and they’ll be proud.”

Cosette glanced at the men on the bed. They looked so peaceful still. She closed her eyes.

“We’ll make them proud,” she said.

It was a promise. To herself, to Azelma.

“Yes.”

To their fathers.

***

_Everything is incredibly white. Javert squints, clapping a hand over his eyes and trying to look through them. The light does not fade._

_He knows he’s dead: he felt his heart stop; practically forced it to through sheer will. Is this Heaven? Or is it his eternal punishment, to be constantly blinded?_

_Moments pass. No voices appear to give him an answer. The white remains._

_Javert sighs. He starts walking, continuing to keep the hand over his hands so the light will not sear his eyeballs. Honestly, why does he still have eyeballs? Isn’t he dead?_

_And where_ is _Valjean? It has only been a few hours; surely he couldn’t have gone very far? If Javert has to chase him once more, then…_

_Then he will. He sighs to himself, and starts to walk faster. Beyond his eyes, the light is starting to retreat a little._

_“What the-_ Javert _?”_

_That is a very familiar voice. Javert stops immediately, his hand falling to his side._

_The light has faded into something far more manageable. And there, standing in front of him, is Valjean._

_He is dressed in dirt-encrusted jeans and a t-shirt that literally hides nothing of his body – his usual attire when mucking around the garden of the house. It’s familiar, almost too sweetly so, but there is something very different about his face._

_Most of the lines and wrinkles on the sides of his eyes and mouth are gone. The_ worry _lines are gone – the few Javert knows that come from smiling still remain. But his face is smooth, smoother than Javert has ever known, even as he gapes at Javert._

_Javert opens his mouth, about to offer an explanation, or perhaps a greeting. But what comes out is, instead:_

_“Were you born bald?” Because that has remained unchanged._

_Valjean stares at him in disbelief. “I’m pretty sure we’re both dead,” he says flatly, a tinge of the irritation Javert has grown very familiar with in the past years coming into his voice. “And_ that’s _what you ask me?”_

_Shrugging, Javert flings an arm in the direction of said bald head. “Your face changed but your hair didn’t grow back,” he said. “I was curious.”_

_It is, he realises, an incredibly stupid thing to say. But what else_ can _he say? ‘Hi, I’m dead too because I literally can’t live without you and so I willed myself to die,’ seems to be… well, it is the truth, but it doesn’t seem to suit this somehow._

_Perhaps Javert has learned too well from Valjean the art of diversion._

_Valjean is still staring at him. After a moment, his lips twitch. He takes three steps forward, and of_ course _Valjean is the one who touches him first; who cups Javert’s face and brings him close for a kiss._

_“I don’t remember not being bald,” he murmurs, carrying on the inane conversation for reasons Javert does not know and does not care about at the moment. “Maybe that’s why.”_

_“Mm,” Javert says. His hand cups the back of Valjean’s neck, drawing him close again when he tries to pull away. “I can’t imagine you not either, so it works.”_

_They kiss like this for long minutes: surrounded in warm light, standing on nothing._

_When Valjean pulls away, Javert lets him. But only a little, for they fall forward together, their foreheads touching._

_Dark eyes – entirely unchanged, thank God – meet his, and Valjean’s mouth quirks up slightly._

_“What are you doing here?” he asks, his hand almost unbearably gentle on Javert’s face. “Didn’t I tell you to live happily for the rest of your time?”_

_Javert closes his eyes. He presses the hand to his jaw, kissing the palm, then the wrist. “This is the end of my time,” he says. “I’ve chased you for so long, then followed you, then walked beside you. Wherever you go, there I will be.”_

_“Oh,” Valjean breathes. He kisses Javert again, long and lingering and filled with so much love that Javert aches down to his bones. He clutches onto Valjean, clings onto his shoulders. It no longer matters to him if this is Heaven or Hell or Purgatory or even oblivion._

_Valjean is here, and that’s all it matters._

_They should not need to breathe anymore, but habit makes them pull apart nonetheless. Valjean’s smile is radiant –_ actually _radiant, a gentle light radiating from his body, from his eyes, and Javert’s breath catches in his throat and he has to kiss him again._

_“I need to show you something,” Valjean says, a little muffled. He tries to pull away, but Javert refuses to let go, wanting to taste that light, to soak in it._

_“Come on, just a moment.”_

_Reluctantly, he steps back. His hands do not leave Valjean’s body; even if he wanted to, he suspects that he can’t let go._

_“Look,” Valjean says._

_Javert follows the nudge. He turns._

_There, in front of them, lies Paris. But the edges of the buildings are faded, disappearing in the all-encompassing light. And there, ahead of them, is a single path. It glitters silver, like a river of stars, and in splits into two upon the next street. One side seems to curl inwards, heading into the labyrinth of the city. The other…_

_The other heads forward, upwards. Up into the clouds, and Javert tips his head back, following it. There, right there, seated within the clouds themselves, are a pair of opened doors. The light that shines down upon them pours out of it, and Javert knows –_ knows _, somehow – that there is a garden just beyond._

_“Oh,” he breathes. “Oh.”_

_“We can choose, I think,” Valjean says, sounding contemplative. “Either we go back and live in the world again, or… we head up there.”_

_He looks at Javert, and Javert shrugs. “Wherever you go,” he says again._

_“I promised Cosette that we will wait,” Valjean says, sounding almost apologetic. “Maybe we can… we can welcome them, when it is their time.”_

_Javert smiles helplessly. He takes Valjean’s hand in his own, lifting it and kissing the knuckles, keeping his eyes on those dark, fathomless ones all the while._

_“Then let’s go,” he says._

_Valjean looks at him. His hand tightens on Javert’s, and he tips his head up to brush their lips again._

_“Let’s go,” he whispers._

_They walk. Even though Javert knows the path heads upwards, it never seems to change; always straight, always flat, in front of them. The clouds get closer, Paris further, but the vertigo Javert expects – they_ are _walking literally upwards, after all – never comes. The doors never seem to grow larger or smaller, staying the same size, stretching up huge above them, the very tops fading into the stars._

_At last they stand, hand in hand, in front of the gates of Heaven._

_“Messieurs,” a voice says warmly. “Welcome.”_

_She comes towards them with arms spread wide. Javert swallows, his hand tightening on Valjean’s. He cannot speak._

_“Fantine,” Valjean greets._

_The last time Javert has seen her, she was dressed in white, her dark hair a halo around her. She has not changed in those twenty years, except… she is even more brilliant now, her form so bright that she seems to be made of light itself._

_Javert looks at her. Valjean steps forward, his other hand reaching out to take her outstretched one. But Javert is frozen, and he cannot move._

_“Are you,” he starts, but his voice fails him. He licks his lips. “Are you sure I can…”_

_He trails off, eyes sliding from Fantine towards the open gates from which the light pours forth._

_Perhaps he has done some good these past twenty years, but Javert has spent far longer dooming himself. Surely, surely…_

_“Javert,” Valjean starts, but it is Fantine who steps forward and places a hand on his shoulder._

_It is warm. She smiles at him in a way he has never seen before – small, sweet, and sincere._

_“Look, Monsieur,” she whispers. Her hand points into the distance, back towards the path they have walked._

_Turning, Javert looks. His eyes follow her finger. It does not stop at the spot where he met Valjean in this world of light. It goes further._

_His breath catches._

_The distance he has walked does not seem to matter, because there, right there in front of him, is an alleyway._ His _alleyway, he knows instinctively. Though he knows not how he knows, because the alleyway in his mind has always been dark, drenched and dripping with blood, the smell of metal heavy in the air. Now…_

_Now the bricks can barely be seen, for they are all almost entirely covered by branches, vines and blooms. Plants and flowers of every variety, some of which Javert recognises, many more he doesn’t even know the look of. They spill over the top of the wall; they reach beyond the mouth of the alleyway._

_And every single bloom emits light. The very light that blinded him when he first appeared here._

_“You have more than earned your place,” Fantine tells him, voice gentle and so, so sure. “I have given you the task of one man, Monsieur, but you… you touched so many. You gave so many joy. You brought them justice, mercy, faith, and hope. Even when you had none of those, you gave it all to them.”_

_Javert surely does not need to breathe. He finds that he cannot, at this moment. His heart is pounding in his ears._

_“I…” he looks to her. “You…”_

_He cannot form the words._

_Yet Fantine seems to know them, for she squeezes his shoulder gently. “Whatever you have done, it has been forgiven,” she tells him. “By me, and by God above.”_

_She steps back, and sweeps the very hand touching him towards the light pouring out of the doors._

_“You are welcome here,” she says. She turns from him to Valjean, and her smile gentles even further. “Both of you.”_

_Javert shudders hard. Beside him, Valjean squeezes his hand, sliding a thumb over his knuckles. Javert grips tightly back, finding Valjean’s pulse without needing to look, feeling the steady thrum beneath._

_It has returned. And, like always, it steadies him. He nods._

_“Come on then,” Fantine says. She takes another step back, the light emanating from her melding into the light from the doors. “All men have their rewards, Messieurs, and this is yours.”_

_Valjean catches his eyes. Javert nods._

_Hand in hand, side by side, they follow Fantine towards the light._  
  
***

     _Here lies Jean Valjean                        Here lies Javert_  
_Once slave, then saviour                    Once captive, then liberator  
__Beloved Father                                   Beloved Father_

_The world made them enemies, but they loved.  
__And their love helped change the world._

 

_The Actual Bloody End_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> … Except that this ‘verse doesn’t want to let me go apparently, because I have an outline for the sequel. It covers the eighteen years that passed between Chapter 24/Book III Chapter 12 to Epilogue 2, and it will be… around 20 chapters (I have no control over my wordcount ever). It will explain the vague references in Epilogue 2 and actually show what happens during the revolution that started because of Valjean.
> 
> Sequel will begin posting mid- or late January 2016, because I’m in the midst of writing it. (I got distracted by other fics and _Hamilton_ for a bit.) I’m not even half-done, and I will be entirely gone for vacation in December. I like having at least three-quarters of a fic done and the rest outlined before I start posting, because then I can keep to a proper posting schedule. It’s very pedantic of me, I know, but I hope you will all be patient!
> 
> Anyway, I started this fic in 6 July 2015. I wrote the last scene on 14 August 2015. Excluding the first two weeks, I only had time to write during the weekends. This fic’s final word count is over 150k, excluding notes.
> 
> So when I say, “Life taken over by fic about sad old French men. Send help,” I really fucking mean it. Thank you everyone for being with me during this insane rollercoaster ride.
> 
> PS: I have two fics that I will be posting in December, one in this ‘verse and one not. So that’s something, at least? 8D?


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